I’d write you something about Pussy Riot, but I am, personally, totally exhausted by the avalanche of commentary which does not appear to consider the particular political and religious context in Russia, and I would be incapable of doing anything myself but adding to that. So I figured I’d give you a roundup of the more knowledgeable sort of stuff. If I learned anything from years in leftist protest circles, it’s that the best protest is one that understands clearly what the problem is.
Let’s start with the women themselves. n+1 has the closing statements of Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the three musicians who comprise the band and who were, yesterday, sentenced to two years in a Russian prison.
I have also found Masha Lipman’s posts on the trial at the New Yorker pretty great.
Some reporting from the Christian Science Monitor on internal reaction in Russia.
It’s interesting that despite the fact that the judge said Pussy Riot had incited religious hatred, even the target of their supposed insult, the Russian Orthodox church, is asking for mercy. I got that link, and a ton of other interesting ones, from the Guardian’s liveblog.
