The American Pussy Riot

The incident in which Cecily has been tried and convicted took place on March 17, 2012 (Saint Patrick’s Day). It occurred during the eviction of protesters by New York City police from Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district. The park was the scene of a prolonged sit-in demonstration, which spread to other major cities across the country, organized by Americans fed up with the kind of complicity between big business and government that led to the 2007 stock market crash and subsequent Federal bailout—a multi-billion-dollar bailout that provided what many saw as undeserved “golden parachutes” to at least negligent CEOs and their companies while millions of average Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings. Cecily, then 23, was a pioneering activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement. She was also a major exponent of pacifism, exorting others at every major meeting of the movement to, above all, keep public demonstrations peaceful and organized.The visit earlier this month of two of Russia’s Pussy Riot members to Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillian—who is in Riker’s Island jail in New York awaiting sentencing this coming Monday (May 19) for striking a police officer—sent out a symbolic message about some disturbing similaries between the standards for freedom of expression in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and in post-9/11 New York City.

To a Party, Not a Party To. Ironically, on the night of the Zuccotti Park incident, Cecily wasn’t taking part in any protest activity. She was taking a night off to celebrate her Irish roots with friends for Saint Patrick’s Day and went to the park to meet up with a companion from the movement who was indeed participating in the Occupy vigil that night. It was as she arrived at Zuccotti Park close to midnight that NYPD officers, armed with a warrant to “shut the premises down for cleaning”, ordered everyone out of the park and began detaining all of those who refused to leave—some 70 in total, only one of whom was eventually charged with a felony: Cecily McMillan. By all accounts—except those of the policeman, Officer Grantley Bovel, whom she allegedly assaulted, and two of his fellow police officers—Cecily was complying with the order to leave Zuccotti Park. As she was walking toward the exit, she was texting a message to a friend. It was as she was doing so that—by her own account and as confirmed by pictures later taken by her physician showing severe bruising—she was grabbed from behind and held fast by her right breast. In reaction, as seen in a video shot at the scene, she sought to break the hold by jumping up and back and driving her elbow into her attacker’s face. In that same video, the viewer sees clearly how Cecily was immediately set upon by a covey of Bovel’s fellow officers who slammed her violently to the ground, continuing to punch and manhandle her once she was subdued. Furthermore, she remained in Bovel’s custody near the scene for half an hour afterward, and during that time complained repeatedly of having trouble breathing, eventually suffering a seizure, which Bovel and his fellow officers (and later the prosecutor as well) laughed off as “faking”, before finally getting her some medical attention after she fell face down onto the pavement as police were escorting her off of the commandeered bus on which she had been held.
Cecily claims to recall nothing from the time Bovel took her into custody until she woke up in a hospital bed. And her own doctor confirmed that she had sustained bruising and contusions to much of her body including her right breast, her legs, her ribs and her back. Officer Bovel claimed that when he detained Cecily (whom he referred to throughout the trial as “the young lady”, perhaps in attempt to divorce McMillan from her persona as an Occupy Wall Street leader), she was being abusive to a woman police officer. But the prosecution rather conspicuously failed to get that fellow officer of Bovel’s to testify on his behalf.

This apparent travesty of justice was picked up by human rights groups throughout the West, including the United States, which declared the two young women “prisoners of conscience” and villified Russia in general and Vladimir Putin’s government in particular, as undemocratic and arbitrary. And yet, Cecily McMillan now faces the possibility, in a New York court, of punishment at least as severe if not much worst than the sentences handed down in Moscow to the Pussy Riot protesters. The New York prosecutor’s insistence not only on bringing charges in what might otherwise have been considered a very minor incident, but also on bringing the most stringent charges possible—assaulting an officer who was in the process of discharging his law enforcement duties—means that McMillan could face between two and seven years in prison.
The Pussy Riot Connection. Pussy Riot is a Russian urban art punk rock protest group that carries out surprise musical protests in strategic locations. They staged one such performance on February 21, 2012, at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral to protest what they call the Russian Orthodox Church leadership’s open support for the government of Vladimir Putin, which Pussy Riot (along with a number of other liberal opposition groups) considers a dictatorship. Church security officers intervened and managed to halt the Pussy Riot protest, but the group later that same day created and released a video clip based on their cathedral protest which they entitled Punk Prayer—Mother of God Chase Putin Away! Ten days later, two members of the group, Naezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were arrested. A third member, Yekaterina Samutevich, was placed under arrest a couple of weeks later. They were all charged with “hooliganism”, which in Russia—now just as under the old Soviet Union—is utilized by government and the courts alike as a catch-all for charging and prosecuting anyone arrested for anything the powers that be should decide to consider inappropriate or criminal behavior. For their anti-Putin stunt at the church and on the video, the urban art protesters were held without bail for four months pending trial and, in a two-week legal process, were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”  They were each handed a two-year prison sentence. In October of that year, two months after sentencing, Samutevich appealed her sentence and was released on probation. But Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina ended up serving their entire sentences, for which they were remanded to custody in separate prisons. They were only released on March 6, 2014.

The fact that, after their own two-year prison ordeal in Putin’s Russia, Maria Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova thought it of utmost importance to pay a very public solidarity visit to Riker’s Island and fellow social protester Cecily McMillian is clearly significant. At a news conference that the two Russian women offered later in Washington, they said that they were “appalled and saddened” by Cecily’s charges and trial. An Occupy Wall Street statement said that the Russian women “identified with Cecily’s plight, especially the disproportionate sentencing she faces.”

What seems immediately apparent to any outside observer is that there is a great deal more to Cecily McMillan’s trial and conviction than the case of a young woman who resisted arrest at a political rally. According to many liberal-minded observers, there would appear to be a very clear intention of the prosecution and the court to make an example of Cecily, not so much because of what she did or didn’t do, but because of what she represents. The court very carefully guided the case in such a way that the only question being tried was whether or not Cecily McMillan had elbowed a policeman in the face. And since, instinctive reaction or not, there was no doubt about this, the only verdict the jury could hand down from the outset was “guilty”.
The defense lost bid after bid to introduce evidence that Officer Bovel had been previously and multiply accused of excessive force or that grabbing women by the breasts was not an unusual procedure among New York police in handling demonstrators. Nor was Cecily’s attorney granted the pre-trial request he put in to see Bovel’s service record. The lawyer, Martin Stolar, was also refused permission to introduce testimony from other Occupy Wall Street protesters, who, after the Saint Patrick’s Day incident, had sued the NYPD for brutality and won. In overruling Stolar’s requests, Judge Ronald Zweibel said that the information the defense wanted to introduce consisted of “mere allegations,” to which a frustrated and irate Stolar responded, “Allegations get people locked up every day in this building!” Thus limited, Stolar eventually opted to bring in more than a dozen witnesses to attest to Cecily’s character and to tell what they had actually seen happen to her on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2012. But the judge eventually put a stop to this as well, saying that it was repetitive and thus served no purpose.

Post 9/11 Security Climate. The climate itself in the courtroom was reported by observers to be oppressive. Security was more what one would expect for the trial of a terrorist than for that of a graduate-student social protester, with police ringing the courtroom inside and out and threatening to crack down at the slightest provocation. It is hard not to associate this climate, the severity of the charges, the judge’s unwillingness to make a single concession to the defense and a clear focus on conviction, with a state of mind that took shape in the United States—and particularly in New York—following the 9/11 terrorist attacks over a decade ago and that has put increasing emphasis on a national security policy that places the authority of the country’s intelligence, military and security forces above its long and world-renowned tradition of individual human and civil rights. In a television interview this past week, Stolar made that very connection, saying that protesters today were often equated by law enforcement with terrorists or potential terrorists—much, one might add, as they were back at the start of the 1960s protest era that dared question the Vietnam War and the burgeoning power of the State.

Of this dense atmosphere, former Occupy Wall Street protester Lauren Wilfong was quoted as saying, “The judge picked out one woman and one moment, but it’s indicative of a much larger problem. And it has some scary implications for activists, even those who weren’t arrested. Many people were brutalized and traumatized during what was a peaceful gathering. We see that night (March 17, 2012) as a microcosm of a much bigger climate of fear and repression.”

Cecily’s attorney aptly summed up the true nature of the incident involving Bovel and McMillan by saying, “The officer got a black eye. It hurt for a minute, but he was back doing his job two weeks later. Cecily got the shit beaten out of her. That’s documented. She has been diagnosed with PTSD, which is probably going to continue for the rest of her life. What’s most disappointing is, I believe, (that) an innocent woman was wrongly convicted. We’ll try to remedy that.”
It only remains to be seen how the judge will rule in Monday’s sentencing to see whether this is indeed a case geared to equitable justice or to making an example of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly activists.

For their part, the two Pussy Riot members held out hope that American justice would be fairer with Cecily McMillan when she is sentenced on Monday than the Russian courts had been with them: “We are hoping that (the) Manhattan court will not convict (sic) Cecily McMillan to (a) prison term,” they said at their press conference, and then added, “Anyway, it’s time to start your own, American Pussy Riot.”