moscow — the slacktivists

In September, Moscow will hold elections for its City Council, or City Duma. Hundreds of candidates who are, for the most part, supportive of Putin have been registered by election officials, but opposition politicians like Ilya Yashin have been barred from the ballot.

Russia regularly holds local and national elections, but they are neither free nor fair
These elections provide legitimacy to the government without actually challenging Putin or his agenda
Their laws on registering political candidates and parties are complicated and misleading, which allows them to deny candidates who have obtained enough signatures a chance to run without fear of punishment
In the City Council elections, collected signatures were rejected on grounds such as “alleged misspelling, wrong addresses, or similar errors” or even that the signatures belonged to fake or dead voters
The reason opposition candidates have been so popular is because they represent and stand for a demographic of people who are discontent with Russian authorities, including Putin, and who are upset at the declining living standards and corruption in the government
The U.S. hasn’t done much, if anything, to help the cause of democratic elections in Moscow, and big news companies didn’t include the protests in mainstream media at all, if they even got a story - maybe it’s because they’re afraid of Russia and don’t want to challenge Putin, or maybe it’s the fact that our president has a strangely amicable relationship with the authoritarian leader

At least 20,000 protesters took to the streets of Moscow on July 20th demanding free and fair elections as well as that opposition candidates be registered by election officials
Police raided the homes of many opposition politicians and arrested Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition leader - BBC
More protests are being planned for July 27th at the Moscow mayor’s office

Speak up and voice your support on social media for protesters in Moscow!
- The protests about the elections have gotten almost no media coverage, and protesters in Moscow need all the help they can get because they system they’re up against is so powerful
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Open Russia - works to educate Russians on how to rebuild a democracy after Putin and promotes independent and objective journalism
The Free Russia Foundation is a “nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental U.S.-based organization, led by Russians abroad that seeks to be a voice for those who can’t speak under the repression of the current Russian leadership”