Power vs. punks? Putin could learn from D.C.
The sentencing this month of three members of the Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot to two years in prison for “hooliganism” showed once again how authoritarian leaders fear the power of art and thus unwittingly undermine their own power.
After all, who had heard of this confrontationally named group until Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparatchiks decided to make an example of them, to help quell a growing chorus of dissent? I had not, even though I am a punk activist and historian who was an early supporter of D.C.’s Riot Grrrl movement, a key inspiration for Pussy Riot.
Without overreaction by the Russian authorities, the band’s theatrical anti-Putin “punk prayer” at a Russian Orthodox cathedral would have touched almost no one beyond the handful present for the action.… Seguir leyendo »