Good news yesterday – Ecuador granted political asylum to foe of tyranny Julian Assange.

Bad news today – the Russian Indie Band Pussy Riot‘s three key members have been sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism:

Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed for two years after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral.

Judge Marina Syrova convicted the women of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, saying they had “crudely undermined social order”.

The women say the protest, in February, was directed at the Russian Orthodox Church leader’s support for Mr Putin.

The closely watched trial has inflamed opinion both at home and abroad.

Prosecutors had been seeking a three-year jail sentence for the women.

Judge Syrova said Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, had offended the feelings of Orthodox believers and shown a “complete lack of respect”.

“Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich committed hooliganism – in other words, a grave violation of public order,” she said.

David Dayen wrote about the courtroom verdict here, this morning:

Activists massed outside the courtroom, chanting “Freedom to Political Prisoners.” Police made arrests of the protesters, including chess champion and former Presidential candidate Gary Kasparov. Russian opposition leader Sergey Udaltsov was detained as well. A number of solidarity protests have taken place across Europe today.

Here is a link to the protests scheduled for today across the globe:  Free Pussy Riot!

There are solidarity protests and events planned in 64 communities worldwide, including  six in the USA:  Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, DC.  The closest demonstration to where I live will be held in Murmansk.

Although most of the U.S. solidarity events seem small – 22 going to the one in Portland, 260 going to San Francisco’s protest – Moscow has well over 1,000 hoping to attend, even Tel Aviv may see 450 attendees, Paris as many as 2,000.

The Rude Pundit has written an essay on the verdict and sentencing that contains a couple of interesting long quotes by band members.  He also observes aspects of the importance of the Pussy Riot case that seem to have been missed by MSM outlets, such as the New York Times:

The members of Pussy Riot know that their trial has done more to energize the free speech and protest movement in Russia, against the power-hungry Putin, in alliance with the church, than their music and performances alone. And the closing statements of the three women in their trial are ass-kicking acts of defiance against a government that seeks to silence dissent.

The history of artists protesting governmental abuses in Imperial Russia, the USSR and the new Russia is long, rich and varied.  Some of the protesting artists managed to write about their experiences with the authorities.  Others articulated why they felt it necessary to object.  These three courageous young women chose to make their closing statements to the court into utterances of defiance, with deep, resonant meaning, though.

Here’s Yekatarina Semutsevich:

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, the state-controlled corporations, or his menacing police system, or his obedient judicial system. It may be that the harsh, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; that otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more persuasive, transcendent guarantees of his long tenure at the pinnacle of power. It was then that it became necessary to make use of the aesthetic of the Orthodox religion, which is historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.

Here is Maria Alyokhina:

And right here, in this closing statement, I would like to describe my firsthand experience of running afoul of this system. Our schooling, which is where the personality begins to form in a social context, effectively ignores any particularities of the individual. There is no ‘individual approach,’ no study of culture, of philosophy, of basic knowledge about civic society. Officially, these subjects do exist, but they are still taught according to the Soviet model. And as a result, we see the marginalization of contemporary art in the public consciousness, a lack of motivation for philosophical thought, and gender stereotyping. The concept of the human being as a citizen gets swept away into a distant corner. Today’s educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom.

And here is Nadezhda Tolokonnikova:

Despite the fact that we are physically here, we are freer than everyone sitting across from us on the side of the prosecution. We can say anything we want and we say everything we want. The prosecution can only say what they are permitted to by political censorship. They can’t say ‘punk prayer,’ ‘Our Lady, Chase Putin Out,’ they can’t utter a single line of our punk prayer that deals with the political system. Perhaps they think that it would be good to put us in prison because we speak out against Putin and his regime. They don’t say so, because they aren’t allowed to. Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, they are only here as dummies. But I hope they realize this and ultimately pursue the path of freedom, truth, and sincerity, because this path is superior to the path of complete stagnation, false modesty, and hypocrisy. Stagnation and the search for truth are always opposites, and in this case, in the course of this trial, we see on the one side people who attempt to know the truth, and on the other side people who are trying to fetter them.

And here is the video that got them imprisoned: