Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova pens “protest manifesto”

Pussy Riot may not be active anymore, but one of its former members, Nadya Tolokonnikova, is still using her influence as an internationally known activist to galvanise people into protest. In a “protest manifesto” published by Dazed Digital, Tolokonnikova gives advice to the “post-change.org” generation on how to turn ordinary gestures and media tools into political weapons.

“Get out of your bubble,” Tolokonnikova writes. “You’re living in the universe and it’s a pretty big place…You have a phone, you have letters, you have doves. It is an eternal problem of the western world that you only focus on your own issues. It’s good to think big sometimes.”

In her other advice, Tolokonnikova urges people to “be more radical than corporations”, not to stigmatise others, appreciate your community, learn when to say no and never forget to have fun.

“Sometimes everyone is so serious and so heroic when they are doing their thing that they forget they have permission to have fun,” Tolokonnikova writes. “You and your friends will draw a giant dick on the forehead of Donald Trump and the world won’t be so scary for you anymore.”

Tolokonnikova, along with former Pussy Riot member Masha Alyokhina, was jailed in Russia after Pussy Riot’s 2012 anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Church of Christ the Saviour landed the pair with two-year jail sentences for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were both pardoned in December 2013 ahead of the Winter Olympics held in Sochi in February 2014.

Source: Dazed Digital