Pussy Riot protests in Sochi
Just two months out of the gulag, punk rock activists Pussy Riot are still doing what they do best: mucking up those moral foundations the Russian Federation strictly protects.
In a new music video for their song, “Putin Will Teach You How To Love,” issued today, the band uses fresh footage to speak out about the ongoing farce they perceive the Olympic games (and Russia’s projected image) to be.
“The Olympics creates a space for the complete destruction of human rights in Russia,” said Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova at a press conference near Sochi, where this year’s games are being held. “Here we are banned from speaking out. Here everyone’s rights are banned, including political activist, LGBT representatives, ecologists.”
Pussy Riot, including newly freed Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, captured some of those injustices on film yesterday. The footage, cut into their new music video, features five members of the group in ski masks attempting to speak out at a site near the Winter Olympics. The members, including one male, are immediately intercepted and whipped bloody by Russian militiamen, called Cossacks.
Although a treacherous experience, highlighting their pain with accessible art mediums like music and film is an apt way to expose their daily oppression to a wider, international audience.
Check out Pussy Riot’s gutsy activism, and get the song stuck in your head, in the video below.
“Putin Will Teach You How To Love” lyrics, according to The Wire:
50 billion and a gay-driven rainbow,
Rodnina and Kabaeva will pass you those flames
In prison they will teach you how to obey
Salut to all bosses, hail, duce!
Putin will teach you how to love the motherland
Sochi is blocked – Olympic surveillance
Special forces, weapons, crowds of cops
FSB is an argument, the police is an argument State tv will run your applause.
Putin will teach you how to love the motherland
Spring to Russia comes suddenly
Hello to the messiah as a shot from Avrora
The prosecutor will put you down
Give him some reaction and not those pretty eyes
A cage for the protests, vodka, matrioshka
Prison for May 6, more vodka and caviar
The Constitution is lynched, Vitishko’s in prison
Stability, the prison meal, the fence and the watchtower
For TV Rain they’ve shut down the airwaves
They took gay pride down the washroom
A two-ass toilet – a priority
Sentence to Russia, medium security, 6 years
Putin will teach you how to love the motherland
The motherland
The motherland
The motherland
Article by Audrey Gertz