From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jun/05/pussy-riot-members-unmask-new-york?CMP=twt_fd
Two non-incarcerated members of the punk rock band are in the US to connect with other activists and to ‘have a dialogue’
Spencer Ackerman in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 June 2013
At an unannounced appearance at a radical feminist bookstore in New York, two members of the Russian punk rock group that sparked an international crisis for Vladimir Putin took off their iconic colorful balaclavas and revealed their faces.
Two youthful women using the pseudonyms Fara and Shaiba revealed themselves as members of Pussy Riot, the activist feminist collective that doubles as perhaps the world’s most dangerous band. It was the first time Pussy Riot has ever visited the United States.
Behind the masks, the protests, the music and the controversy that prompted Russian courts to convict two of their comrades on “hooliganism” charges, Fara and Shaiba, dressed in unassuming clothing, looked like any young women who might move about New York or any other city.
That accessibility was central to their message, delivered through translation: “We are keeping the spirit alive. Continue the riot. Right now we are here on a special mission to try to establish connections with like-minded people and organizations throughout the globe.” Any woman in a balaclava who believes in gender equality and is willing to fight for it, they said, can be considered a member of Pussy Riot. They showed their faces, Shaiba said, because they believed they were in a “safe space.”
Their appearance on Monday night at Bluestockings, a feminist bookshop on New York’s Lower East Side, was not announced on the store’s website. Invitations spread through word of mouth. The 50-odd attendees, many of them young activists, were asked to keep news of the band’s arrival off social media and the Internet. The Guardian was able to attend the small gathering provided it kept news of their appearance under a 48-hour embargo and did not photograph Fara and Shaiba with their masks off – all security measures, they said, to avoid the Russian security services that imprisoned their bandmates and continue to target them.
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jun/05/pussy-riot-members-unmask-new-york?CMP=twt_fd
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