Masha turns 25 today, her second birthday behind bars due to her 30-second protest song performance in February of 2012. We say “Happy Birthday” to her today and we say it out loud, not because it’s a happy circumstance where she needs to celebrate yet another birthday and not because the injustice of her incarceration and time lost with her young son doesn’t burn us less today than it does every other day, but simply out of a desire to wish her well and to put into the universe a small fraction of the positivity and regard for a fellow human being that she has put into this place and time that we live. Yesterday, at the NYC premiere of Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s powerful documentary PUSSY RIOT – A PUNK PRAYER, Patti Smith introduced the film to the audience mentioning that the premiere fell on the birthday of Federico García Lorca, an artist who because of his sexual orientation and political views was taken out into a field and shot. She begged the audience to remember that we don’t live in a world or a time where this can’t and doesn’t still happen. Masha and her fellow artists are fighting a fight for us all. Masha is our daughter, our sister, and our inspiration. She has and will inspire thousands if not millions of little girls, and boys, and grown ones too, to stand up for what they believe in and to fight for their fellows against injustice in this world. And that’s the important point here, perhaps on this day especially, that our appreciation for this extraordinary woman doesn’t stop at appreciation, but that we take up her fight, that we are inspired to action, that we fight for each other and to get her back with her son Philip as soon as possible – that we stand up for another when we see injustice perpetrated, even if it means putting our own bodies upon the gears and levers. That, quite surely, would be the best birthday present we could all give Masha.
-Hunter