#SolidarityWisconsin from The Voice Project on Vimeo.
Commentor Omnes Omnibus sent along a lovely news article:
The solidarity singers who gather daily at the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison have a pair of surprise guest musicians joining their chorus — Pussy Riot.
Two members of the notorious Russian female rock group known for their outspoken protests, Nadya Tolokonikova and Masha Alyokhina, make a surprise appearance in a new video extolling Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to drop the state’s prosecution against the singing protesters…
The video is part of a campaign called #SolidarityWisconsin launched by the Voice Project, an organization that fights for freedom of expression around the globe. The organization draws a direct line between the persecution faced by the members of Pussy Riot and what’s going on in Wisconsin…
The Soldarity Singer protests started in 2011 as part of the protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 bill that stripped most public-sector workers of most of their collective bargaining rights. Capitol police issued hundreds of citations against protesters – last month a judge threw out 29 citations, but over 400 remain…
Commentor Kideni has more, from the ground level, including a Change.org petition:
We’ve been on the front line of a state government crackdown on free speech in the state capitol building. Between July 24 and September 6, 2013, nearly 200 different people were arrested for singing in the state capitol, and were given close to 400 citations (some of us were arrested more than once). The citations are civil forfeitures and the equivalent of a speeding ticket or not having proper life jackets in a boat, and yet we were all handcuffed, taken to a holding area, searched, and sometimes injured because the Capitol Police are so poorly trained that they don’t understand how to handle people in handcuffs safely, and they also inflicted pain compliance holds on a few people. All of these citations are being challenged, and people are demanding either jury trials or bench trials. We are being prosecuted by the State of Wisconsin, and the assistant attorneys general in the Department of Justice have been instructed not to drop any of these cases, even though it means their attention is pulled away from going after sexual predators, child abusers, and consumer fraudsters. There’s at least one other member of the Balloon Juice community who was arrested during the crackdown (I have two citations; I believe the other person has five), and I know there are a few regular commenters who know a bit about what’s going on, so I thought this might be of interest to the blog at large.