Free Pussy Riot! Legal defense fundraiser party coming to Brooklyn

Contrary to potentially popular belief, Pussy Riot is not an uprising over the failed Trojan vibrator incident of yesterweek. In case you haven’t heard, Pussy Riot is an unapologetically raucous and unapologetically feminist Russian punk trio arrested in March for staging an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s main cathedral. As such badassery could not possibly go unpunished, the three women of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years of prison camp on chargers of hooliganism, which is essentially as trumped up as it is silly-sounding.

If you’re willing to go all the way for Pussy Riot, then you’re going to want to be at Public Assembly next Friday, Aug. 31. From 10pm to 4am, the Williamsburg spot will be hosting a Pussy Riot defense fundraiser featuring a number of guest DJs, pussy revolutionaries, and free PBRs to the first 150 who show up wearing brightly colored ski masks, the band’s signature.

There’s a $5-20 suggested donation, but there’s no minimum for those who only have enough to riot in solidarity. You can buy a $5 ticket now, and if you need a further incentive to drink, Public Assembly is throwing in 5 percent of the bar sales toward the cause.

More background on the band that has caused humble NPR hosts to say the word “pussy” over and over again:

Nearly overnight (thanks Internet!), Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Marina Alekhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich became the faces of dissent, both masked and unmasked. And because we all know that dissent is so hot right now, the response in support of Pussy Riot has been immediate and international. Hundreds of supporters gathered outside of the Moscow courthouse when the verdict was released, and fundraising events have popped up all over the US and abroad to fund a legal defense team for the Pussy trio.

The New Yorker went on at length about the absurdity of the “crime.” The New York Times also contributed some realness when they deconstructed the band’s ethos and implications that our support could have. After the verdict, a bunch of Vice Magazine staffers went and got “hooliganism” tattooed in solidarity. Because everyone knows that hating on communism is so passe, supporting Pussy Riot is about more than Russian aurhoritarianism, it’s about opposing the “corporate state system.”

Riot on, y’all.

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