I will never forget the atmosphere at the giant protests against Putin in Moscow in 2011. We were grateful to each other for coming out of our houses and creating a new, incredible, clever political animal and force for good that filled the streets and squares. We were in love with each other and with the feeling that suffuses everyone involved in major emancipatory social movements.
“We had grasped the great truth that it was not rifles, not tanks, and not atom bombs that created power, nor upon them that power rested,” says Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident. “Power depended upon public obedience, upon a willingness to submit.”
There are cultures of eating, film viewing, and book reading, and there is the culture of revolt, the ability to pose awkward questions, cast doubt on things, and change them. Feed the latter. Even the best, most perfect president will serve you fuck-all on a silver platter. It’s self-service in these parts.
“It is not simply a question of making the ‘other’ change; the painful truth is that we, too, will have to change,” writes Paul Verhaeghe, a Belgian professor of clinical psychology and psychoanalysis and author of What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society (2012). “Instead of being merely consumers, we must once again become citizens—not just in the voting booth, but above all in the way in which we lead our lives. . . . If we want politics to be governed by the public interest—and that is more necessary than ever—we ourselves must promote that public interest, rather than private concerns.”
Verhaeghe points out a paradox of the (post)modern individual, “a strange type of dissociation, a new form of split personality”: we are hostile to the system and at the same time feel powerless to change it. On top of that, “we act in a way that reinforces and even extends it. Every decision we make—what to eat and drink, what to wear, how to get about, where to go on holiday—demonstrates this. We are the system that we complain about.”
Erich Fromm distinguished two ways of living: being and having. The “having” mode of existence is a product of consumerist culture, when someone believes that a human being is an empty vessel to be filled with different commodities. If it’s not filled, then anxiety, crisis, psychological blackout happens.
If you read Fromm, many things about oligarchy, celebrity fascism, Trump, and Putin become clear. Fromm points out how the development of the industrial economic system radically shifted the values of our civilization. With industrialization, he says, came the idolization of growth and profit. We’re not longing to be anymore, but to have, to have the maximum pleasure and fulfillment of every desire (radical hedonism), which results in the egotism, selfishness, and greed of people.
In 1956 Fromm wrote The Art of Loving, where he fairly states, “Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself. . . . Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.”
I’m concerned with the idolization of economic growth. Why did we even start to think that we have to grow endlessly in the first place? We aren’t inflatable ducks or unicorns. “The truth is that, for developed nations, continued economic growth as conventionally measured is incompatible with climate stability,” writes Samuel Alexander, a researcher at Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute. “A safe climate requires that we now need a phase of planned economic contraction, or ‘degrowth.’ This does not simply mean producing and consuming more efficiently and shifting to renewable energy, necessary though these changes are. It also requires that we produce and consume less—a conclusion that few dare to utter.” What we need to do is to find a way to make a shift to a stable, postgrowth economy.
We need a shift in values, we need a change of paradigm. Happiness is bigger than growth and profit—on the scale of the planet, on the scale of history. I’m sure that if something may be changed at this point, it would never come from the government, it’d never come from the top 1 percent. It will be something requested by mass movements of the people.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Thus, the word is more essential than cement. Thus, the word is not a small nothing. In this manner, noble people begin to grow, and their words will break cement.” When I am weak, then I am strong. Just like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end the word will break cement.
But if we are to do so, we also need more democracy, and when I say “democracy” I mean “direct democracy.” It’s ridiculous and hysterically unfunny that with the internet spread all around, we do not have in our hands more effective methods to directly participate in everyday political decisions. Our political systems are still structured in a way that pretends the internet does not exist. The authorities cannot guarantee the security of the electoral process. And in fact, many Republicans are more interested in disenfranchising voters than ensuring free and fair elections. We elect representatives once every four or six years and then they are free to do whatever the fuck they want, to take bribes from lobbyists, destroy the public infrastructure, and most importantly, wreck our planet. Don’t expect that these rights to participate in direct democracy will be handed over to you, though. The Koch brothers and Putin’s buddies, oligarchs like the Rotenbergs, will make sure that we won’t get them. We need to gnaw out these rights.
In his final lectures, Michel Foucault spoke of the need for parrhesia, the courage to speak out (one of Diogenes’s favorite ideas). “We tend to interpret this lazily, for instance by sniping at the Catholic Church, or venting our opinions (bristling with exclamation marks) on internet forums,” writes Paul Verhaeghe.
Some would say that we should just rearrange our private lives and it’ll be fine. I say that’s like making the bed in your cabin on the Titanic when the ship is already underwater.
The future is not going to be bright if the driver’s seat is occupied by petty assholes. We have to call to account those who are abusing power in our name. We need to grab the power back.
* * *
The old Communist cult of personality is still alive in North Korea. If you wish to mention former leader Kim Jong-il in print, one of his many titles and a special typeface must be used. Either something large and out of place (Brilliant Leader Kim Jong-il blah blah blah) or something in a different and incongruous font (FATHER OF THE PEOPLE KIM JONG-IL blah blah blah).
Although all the names listed below are used to refer to Kim Jong-il, they are equally applicable to any paternalistic fantasy of an almighty figure about to come and save us. If we want to be saved, we may consider undertaking our own action and doing it ourselves. “Nothing will work unless you do,” as Maya Angelou said.
A list of people we don’t need:
Superior Person
Dear Leader
Respected Leader
Wise Leader
Brilliant Leader
Unique Leader
Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have
Father of the People
Guiding Sun Ray
Leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
Guarantee of the Fatherland’s Unification
Fate of the Nation
Beloved Father
Leader of the Party, the Country, and the Army
Ever-Victorious, Iron-Willed Commander
Great Sun of the Nation
World Leader of the 21st Century
Peerless Leader
Bright Sun of the 21st Century
Amazing Politician
Great Man, Who Descended from Heaven
Glorious General, Who Descended from Heaven
Invincible and Triumphant General
Guiding Star of the 21st Century
Great Man, Who Is a Man of Deeds
S
avior
Mastermind of the Revolution
Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradeship
* * *
Deeds
bite off your tongue
Let me tell you what happens as the result of an abuse of power. Politically motivated arrests, for example.
“What should I say if I am beaten during interrogation?”
“You should say it is bad to beat people,” advises a lawyer, “and put up with it.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
It’s 2012, one week before our arrest. Coffee shop in Moscow. Pussy Riot’s activists are here with overstuffed backpacks, our eyes red after a sleepless night. We already know the Russian state has decided to arrest Pussy Riot and prosecute us for a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison. The criminal case has been opened, and we’re on the lam. I’m trying to get used to the idea that I’ll end up in prison soon. I eat one cake after another.
“As long as they are beating you, you should say you will bite off your tongue, but you will not testify.”
“That I will bite off . . . what? My tongue?”
“Yes, that you will bite off your tongue.”
“But I’m not going to bite off my tongue!”
“Well, at least say it convincingly.”
Everyone looks at the table.
“Let’s try hitting each other in the face with a bottle and find out whether it hurts,” my friend suggests.
“No, let’s not do it now. We’ll scare people.”
“Let’s step outside then. What, you think you’ll have a lot more time to prepare for interrogations?”
The next day we escape from the police to the countryside and find ourselves in a quiet place where the white snow crunches underfoot. If you walk down the hill, atop which the house stands, to a narrow stream, you smell smoke from the Russian stoves, and you hear watchdogs barking from behind old wooden fences.
We go into the apartment and plop down on the floor. We stare straight ahead.
“We need to get some sleep.”
“Yes.”
The five of us curl up together on a double bed and, huddled together like dogs in the cold, we fall asleep.
We spent two days in the countryside. In the mornings, I descended the hill to jog along the river. When I was warming up, I shadowboxed and shadowkicked the air opposite shattered old brick buildings that had been factories sometime in the distant Soviet past. I greedily breathed in the rural air, and it made me dizzy. I responded by jumping and flogging the empty space more energetically with my fists.
Despite the cold, the thin stream at the foot of the hill did not freeze over because of the toxic industrial waste dumped into it. I halted on a bridge over the river and listened. I was aware of wooden houses, spruce trees, barking dogs, the smell of woodstoves, the sun, the blinding snow, and water running over stones.
And what if, I thought, swinging my leg, I don’t see this sun and this river again for several years? I need to muster my strength and soak up the sun’s warmth while I can.
I froze, like a dandelion that turns to face the sun. If I am, nevertheless, imprisoned, I will definitely come back here, to this bridge, because it is my river and my air and my world, and no louse can take them away from me.
This was what I thought as I stood on the bridge, waiting for my arrest.
* * *
When the state decided to arrest us, we were not professional politicians, revolutionaries, or members of an underground cell. We were activists and artists, a bit naive and straightforward, as is common among artists.
When we were arrested, we were more like cartoon characters than characters from Salt or Tomb Raider. We laughed at our pursuers more than we feared them. We would burst out laughing thinking about the pettiness of the circumstances. A huge team of well-trained and well-paid state investigators was tracking down a group of pranksters and freaks with ridiculous bright hats pulled over their faces.
We, the five women who performed the Punk Prayer, sat glued to our rucksacks drinking coffee, gradually getting used to the idea that every sip of coffee could be the last sip we took on the outside.
A few days later, about one hour before my arrest, I painted my fingernails and toenails red, did my hair, and put on a white-and-blue polka-dot ribbon. I left the house to buy a gift for my daughter, Gera, whose birthday was the following day, March 4. Her father, Peter, and I had already bought a set of tiny toy badgers, a whole family (mom, dad, daughter, and son), for her. We had to find furniture and a kitchen for them, and a family of hedgehogs to be their friends.
“Freeze! Hands on the wall!”
Ten men in plain clothes jumped Peter and me near the glass doors of a subway station.
Peter was hurled against the wall.
“Over here, you louse!”
They dragged me away.
They shoved us into a community police office. The men in plain clothes flashed badges from the Moscow CID. Dressed in Adidas sneakers and tracksuits, they were around six feet tall.
I ripped the page from my notebook containing the password for Pussy Riot’s mailbox. I crumpled and swallowed it. The paper stuck in my throat.
“Could I get some water?” I asked.
“You don’t deserve good treatment, whore!” a CID officer replied.
I reacted by pulling my hood over my head and lying down on the bench in the police office. The thought of chatting with these guys from Moscow CID did not thrill me. I had a long road ahead of me. I had to gather my strength.
“Get used to sitting up, bitch!”
Another officer, also dressed in a tracksuit, grabbed me and jerked me up.
I took out a book.
Peter managed to make a five-second call to a lawyer with his phone. The cops, enraged because they hadn’t been keeping track of him, confiscated the phone and dismantled it.
One of the Moscow CID officers nodded at me, maliciously grinning.
“She’s fucking pretending to read.”
“I am reading.”
I smiled and straightened my polka-dot ribbon.
In all psychologically damaging situations, I read. It helps, I’ve never had a panic attack in my life. So far. When Trump won the election in America, I read for two months. I was seriously overwhelmed.
take back the streets
Streets are our veins. Walls—skin. Roofs, windows—eyes. Trees are lungs. Benches are our butts. Traffic is a burp. We’re becoming the town we’re living in. We’re quite alienated from making decisions about how the city we live in will look. It’s ridiculous. How can someone possibly decide how my city will look just because he or she has money and I don’t?
If you’re living in the city, the quality of your life depends on the quality of public spaces much more than on your furniture. I love cities with lots of graffiti. They have vitality, sexual animal energy, those towns. Every city is a dragon of a million faces, and we should be able to see it on the streets. If we see only the footprints of billionaires and corporations, it means that the dragon is sick, and it needs an anarchist angel doctor. I don’t understand cities that have been completely taken over by commerce. They look like shopping malls where only zombies can stay alive. I don’t like it when I can’t sit on the ground.
“It looks like you’re hanging out here,” guards tell me. Yes, I am. That’s what I call life, hanging out here and there, leaving traces. Take back the streets, make them beautiful, different, controversial, strange. The streets are an open ongoing conversation. The streets are open relationships too.
Occupy Wall Street is one of the most inspirational things that has happened so far in the twenty-first century. I could not believe my ears when I heard about it for the first time. The 1 percent understood the power of this movement too, and they did their best to shut down this magic situation of reclaiming streets.
It was May 6, 2014, and we were about to have a meeting at the US Senate in Washington when we learned about
Cecily McMillan’s case, one of the most brutal decisions against Occupy protesters. Cecily McMillan was convicted of felony second-degree assault after she was arrested and assaulted by a New York City police officer. She said that her breast was grabbed and twisted by someone behind her, and she responded by reflexively elbowing her attacker in the face. The police officer disputed Cecily’s version of events, and the jury sided with him. As a result, she was facing seven years in jail. Pussy Riot faced seven years for our protests too.
At the Senate we were supposed to be raising awareness about human rights abuses in Russia, but we were so shocked by Cecily’s case—we considered her an American political prisoner—we decided to go broader and speak about her as well, in the Senate and then at our a press conference on Capitol Hill.
Instead of calling Capitol Hill “Capitol Hill,” we happened to call it “Capital Hell.”
On May 9, a few days after our hearing in the Senate, I met Cecily McMillan in the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, New York City’s offshore complex of ten jails that can house up to 15,000 prisoners. Cecily has an amazing political charisma, a trait not every social or political activist can successfully cultivate. Cecily’s efforts are aimed at undoing social indifference: her ideals are volunteering, solidarity, and mutual consideration of other people’s struggles, but her ideals were nowhere to be found in that court.
The judge who presided over the case, Ronald Zweibel, seemed to be siding with the prosecutors from the beginning—time and time again he forbade the defense from presenting evidence to show the jury that Cecily’s physical action of using her elbows against the police was not without just cause. The cops’ use of force to disperse Occupy activists was not an isolated event, and Cecily was adamant that she was personally reacting against sexual harassment. The judge limited the jury’s access to information during the trial. On May 5, Cecily was found guilty.
Despite the fact that nine of the twelve jurors wrote a letter to the judge asking that she not be incarcerated, Cecily could have been sentenced to seven years in prison. On the day Cecily was sentenced, the jurors were not aware of the article used to accuse Cecily, nor were they aware that the article stipulated imprisonment. The jury’s change of heart calls to mind a quote from Luke 23:34: “They know not what they do.” The fate of Cecily McMillan is a perfect example of why her efforts as an activist are needed: the inability of the jury to accept Cecily’s problems as their own and to take the time and consideration during her trial to seek justice resulted in her imprisonment.
Read & Riot Page 9