Read & Riot
Page 10
Me and my Pussy Riot colleagues Masha and Peter went to visit Cecily on Rikers Island. She might be the happiest prisoner we ever met.
Cecily told us with great pride that her ability to talk to people of different social categories and groups is one of her most valued traits. Her ultimate goal is to find points of contact between closed social clusters and create a platform for shared, collective action. At various times in her life, Cecily has found herself in completely different strata of American society, switching from one layer of language and experience to another. This is the heart of Cecily’s interest—to master these “other tongues”; to understand social circles outside of that in which she was born, raised, and made her career; and to understand other people’s experiences.
Cecily wants to gradually recover the lost social dialogue between the 1 percent, who basically own everything, and the 99 percent, who have to live in their shadow. She also opposes the policies of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who, in an effort to further restrict trade union rights, gave the green light to arrest hundreds of people whose only fault was singing in the State Capitol. (I spent two years in prison for singing a song about Putin. I can’t understand how anyone could be arrested for singing.) If it is Walker’s goal to weed out undesirable voices, then it is Cecily’s goal to return those voices to the people who have been deprived of them.
Cecily McMillan’s case reflects global politics. Judge Zweibel’s verdict marked a dangerous new direction in the United States and countries indirectly impacted by US domestic policies.
“May Judge Zweibel avoid becoming a link to these practices and, like a true patriot, may he admit his fault and rescind such a shameful judicial precedent?” I asked myself after visiting Cecily in jail.
P.S. After three months in Rikers, Cecily was released; she got five years of probation.
* * *
Step into the streets and take back what’s ours. Streets, squares, corners, yards, shores, and rivers—they are public; education, health care, transport, and natural resources are public too. We just have to remember that.
We have more than enough signs that changes are ready to be made, that people are willing to share their time, energy, brains, and hearts to reach their dreams. The massive support for progressive forces all around the globe is obvious to anyone who breathes—for Jeremy Corbyn, who won the votes of the young generation in Britain, Bernie Sanders in the United States, the Podemos party in Spain. And Russia too, where there have been huge protests against Putin and his fellow oligarchs, a mind-blowing grassroots campaign for an alternative future for our country.
“All over the world, people are rising up against austerity and massive levels of income and wealth inequality,” Bernie Sanders said at the People’s Summit in Chicago right after Corbyn’s Labour Party’s stunning result in the UK election in June 2017. “People in the UK, the US and elsewhere want governments that represent all the people, not just the 1 percent.”
Heroes
the berrigan brothers
As an activist, I am often asked, What are you fighting for? Why should we organize?
We have solid answers that are reasonable enough: we need real democracy, a better quality of life for the 99 percent, free independent media, broader opportunities, access to medication and health care, environmental responsibility. But there are times when you’re exhausted as an activist, as a human being. Sometimes you’re just tired.
Then you find your source of inspiration in muses who are walking through life so elegantly, meaningfully, bravely, fighting beautifully and politely and without compromise. They’re not mythological figures or the product of fairy tales or miracles. They’re real. Look around you. Shake off pain from your shoulders, let it fall to the floor, and go march with your muses. Make an effort to speak in “the unlikeliest and rarest of tongues: the truth,” as Daniel Berrigan put it. People like the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip, are muses for an activist.
Philip Berrigan served in the US Army in World War II, then became a priest in 1955. Daniel Berrigan, the intellectual and theologian, was ordained in 1952.
Daniel Berrigan gives us one of the best possible reasons to keep being motivated to spot abuses of power. “But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of the truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?” (as quoted on the cover of Time, January 25, 1971). “After a given time, we cannot so much as imagine any alternative human arrangement than the one we are enslaved to—whether educational, legal, medical, political, religious, familial. The social contract narrows, the socialization becomes a simple brainwash. Alternative ways, methods, styles are ignored, or never created,” he writes in The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation. As an antiwar activist and the first-ever priest on the FBI’s “most wanted list,” Philip and Daniel collaborated with Howard Zinn and Martin Luther King Jr., led antiwar demonstrations, and resisted American military imperialism in the turbulent times of the Vietnam War. In his lifetime, Philip Berrigan served eleven years in jail for his protest actions.
In 1967 Philip Berrigan and his comrades (the “Baltimore Four”—two Catholics and two Protestants, one of whom was an artist and two ex-military, including Berrigan, a former infantry lieutenant) occupied the Selective Service Board, a military building in Baltimore where the draft was organized. The men poured human and chicken blood over records in a sacrificial act meant to protest “the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood in Indochina.” Philip Berrigan and others were arrested for this action. Their trial took place at the same time as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the subsequent riots in Baltimore and other American cities. Berrigan was sentenced to six years in federal prison. Their nonviolent action laid the foundation for more radical antiwar demonstrations.
“I think that [the] word [of the church], on the modern scene, is one of liberation from death. We are learning something of the price of that word, in repeated trials and jailings,” writes Daniel Berrigan.
In 1968, Philip Berrigan was released on bail. Of course, the brothers did not stop. Philip and Daniel, joined by seven other activists (the group became known as the “Catonsville Nine”) walked into the offices of a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, removed six hundred draft records, doused them in homemade napalm, and burned them in front of the building.
“We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country’s crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor,” they said.
The brothers were convicted of conspiracy and destruction of government property. They were sentenced to three years in prison. They went into hiding but were caught and forced to serve the sentence.
Our courageous priests’ story is far from its conclusion at this point, but I’ll shut up and let you explore it by yourself. Do it during the tough times when you feel like you have way too many troubles as an activist. What if you don’t?
One of the biggest challenges in resisting abusive power is that you constantly have to look for more inspiration and motivation. They beat you, and you don’t just bear it, but you find in yourself enough courage and mischievous energy to laugh. The key is consistency. Power is abusive pretty consistently. We should be consistent in spotting it and building alternative futures.
Rule № 7
DON’T GIVE UP EASY. RESIST. ORGANIZE.
* * *
When you say that the emperor is naked, you may end up being punched in the face by the emperor’s people. You’ll be labeled demented and insane; a crazy, perverted, dangerous idiot. But you’re the happiest sort of idiot—an idiot who knows the divine joy of telling the truth.
* * *
Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things one must steal, to be used against the established order.
PABLO PICASSO
And I wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else on the planet. I think we’ve landed on turf where the breakthrough occurs. I think it’s occurred already.
DANIEL BERRIGAN, THE NIGHTMARE OF GOD
A man possessed of inner freedom, memory, and a sense of fear is the blade of grass or wood chip that can alter the course of the swift-flowing stream.
NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM, HOPE ABANDONED
Words
What makes us act out? I for one am really angry because Russia’s principal political institutions are law enforcement, the army, intelligence agencies, and prisons. Run by a lone insane quasi-superhero, riding horseback half-naked, a man who is not afraid of anyone (except gays). A man so generous that he has handed half the country over to his closest friends, all of them oligarchs. What kind of act is this?
By working together, we can build institutions different from these.
We don’t want to be passive squares, boring phonies, or conformists seduced by comfort, trapped in a repetitive, endless ritual of consuming, who keep buying shit that’s thrown to us as a bone, who forget how to ask honest and important questions, who are just trying to make it through the day.
take your beatings as a badge of honor
They will try to shut you up and shut you down.
It’s useful to have the ability to transform obstacles and tragedy into strength and faith. If you can get it, do it. I’m not sure where they sell it, but if you come across this thing, no matter what it costs, you must pay, and then pay some more. It’s worth every penny.
Me and the other Pussy Riot members acquired this superpower during our arrest, trial, and jail time. Ironically, by locking us up we found an almost sublime liberation. Despite the fact that we were physically imprisoned, we were freer than anyone sitting across from us on the side of the prosecution. We could say anything we wanted, and we said everything we wanted. The prosecution could only say what the political censors permitted them to say.
Their mouths are sewn shut. They are puppets.
Stagnation and the search for truth are always opposites. In this case, and in the case of every political trial, we see on the one side people who are attempting to find the truth, and on the other side people who are trying to fetter the truth seekers.
It was our search for truth that led us to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. We were persecuted in the name of Christianity. But I think Christianity, as I understood it while studying the Old Testament and, especially, the New Testament, supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming of oneself, the overcoming of what you were before.
But I did not see evidence of forgiveness at our trial.
It would serve us well to remember that a human being is a creature who is always in error, never perfect. She strives for wisdom but cannot possess it. This is why philosophy was born. This is ultimately what forces the philosopher to act, think, and live, and most importantly, maintain a sense of poetry in their outlook on the world.
In poetry and political trials, there are no winners and losers. Together, we can be philosophers, seeking wisdom instead of stigmatizing people and labeling them.
* * *
The price of participation in the creation of history is immeasurably great for the individual. But the essence of human existence lies precisely in this participation. To be a beggar, and yet to enrich others. To have nothing, but to possess all.
Do you remember what young Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for? His guilt rested on the fact that he was fascinated by socialist theories, and during meetings of freethinkers and friends, on Fridays in the apartment of Mikhail Petrashevsky, he discussed the writings of Charles Fourier and George Sand. On one of the last Fridays, he read aloud Vissarion Belinsky’s letter to Nikolai Gogol, a letter that, according to the court that tried Dostoevsky, was filled “with impudent statements against the Orthodox Church and the supreme authorities.” Dostoevsky was taken to a parade ground to be executed, but after “ten agonizing, infinitely terrifying minutes awaiting death,” it was announced that the sentence had been commuted to four years of hard labor in Siberia followed by military service. The same day Dostoevsky wrote his brother, “Life is everywhere, life in ourselves, not in what is outside us.”
Socrates was accused of corrupting youth with his philosophical discussions and refusing to accept the Athenian gods. He had a living connection with the divine voice, and he was not, as he insisted many times, by any account an enemy of the gods. But what did that matter when Socrates irritated the influential citizens of his city with his critical, dialectical thought, free of prejudice? Socrates was sentenced to death, and having refused to escape Athens (as his students proposed), he courageously drank a cup of hemlock and died.
Injustice in the name of religion. Labeling truth seekers as crazy. Even Christ himself, characterized as “demon-possessed and raving mad” (John 10:20), was sentenced to death for crimes against the church: “It is not for good works that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy” (John 10:33).
If the authorities, tsars, presidents, prime ministers, and judges understood the meaning of “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13), they would not put the innocent on trial. Authorities, however, are still in a hurry to condemn, but in no way to reprieve.
If you let someone define what is the center for you, you’re already playing somebody else’s game. But if you try to live your life right, you can look any (wo)man in the face and tell her/him to go to hell.
* * *
TERMS ALL MEMBERS OF THE RESISTANCE SHOULD KNOW
GREED. An emotion that tells you money and fame are the most important things. If you don’t fight it actively, it’s easy to get caught up in greed. It sneaks up on you, and then you find yourself doing shit you never would have dreamed of as a kid. When greed has crept in, you lose a clear vision of things. You become a proud member of the league of bastards. But pigs cannot fly, even if they are genetically altered.
IMPEACHMENT. Something you should demand if your president is a dangerous, uncontrollable asshole, every day getting more backward than he was to begin with.
CELEBRITY FASCISM. A disease that should be eradicated by any means. An ultracorrupted state of mind in which someone believes that money and status will always let you get away with being an asshole and committing crimes. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”
CLITORIS. A very important part of the human body that has been extensively repressed by patriarchal culture. It’s something that is either ignored by phallocentric society or destroyed through barbaric procedures of mutilation.
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. One of the main methods of handling the country and managing law enforcement agencies’ job, according to Putin. Trump shares Putin’s views on that.
FREE TUITION. Something we should all have.
ORGANIZATION. A must for activists. The only way to go. Occupy streets and squares, and do not leave until your requirements are fulfilled. Plot, demand, persist. There is a monster inside all of us, and the monster wants honesty.
PUSSY. Something that you’re not going to get without a riot. No riot, no pussy.
PUTIN. A tiny malicious KGB agent, whose main goal in life is to steal more and more money from the Russian people and who would love to see a patriarchal, ethics-free oligarchy spread all around the globe.
* * *
Deeds
freedom is the crime that contains all crimes
Arrest is an almost religious experience. The moment you are arrested, you are abruptly purged of the self-centered confidence that you can control the world. You find yourself alone and faced with a vast ocean of uncertainty. Only high spirits,
a smile, and calm confidence can help you sail across this ocean.
We are not told what we have been arrested for, and I don’t ask. Goes without saying. Keys, telephones, notebook, and passport are all confiscated.
After all the necessary formalities have been observed, we are sitting with the political police case officer in the hallway of the police station. “By the way, you hid very well. We knocked ourselves out looking for you. Way to go.”
My first interrogation is at 4:07 a.m. I refuse to testify. An hour later, I am taken to the Temporary Detention Center at Petrovka, 38. Prisoners move around stiffly in handcuffs, escorted by guards. The next confiscation steals my shoelaces, scarf, boots, bra, and polka-dot ribbon.
A blond female cop orders me to strip, spread my legs, and bend down, and she pulls my butt cheeks apart with my hands.
“And hurry, hurry, you’re not in kindergarten!” says the blonde’s partner, a brunette.
I write an official announcement that I am going on indefinite hunger strike.
I am already hungry as hell.