Hi everyone, my name is Lena Marus, and today it’s my turn to take over the blog. I was the art director of Navalny’s summer election campaign, the creator of the red circles and turquoise placards, and the person through whom everything we produced and distributed passed.
As the creative director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, I’m still responsible for everything visual (yes, I know this blog is full of monstrous imperfections; we’ll fix that), I work with designers and advertising people who want to help us, and together we come up with ways to promote the Foundation’s projects.
We’ve already made a bunch of cool things, some of which you’ve seen: dacha.fbk.info, sochi.fbk.info, yakunin.fbk.info, pension.fbk.info, and some you haven’t yet (our beautiful new visual identity, for example). Today I want to tell you about our newest and very important project: “Navalny Thursday.”
For a long time, we’ve been thinking about what an ordinary person™ can do—someone who understands everything, wants to change the situation, but doesn’t have the skills to pitch tents, defend a fountain from OMON riot police, or set tires on fire. Someone who doesn’t know what to do between rallies. We were sure there had to be some very simple and merciless ~~like a club~~ tool, but we just couldn’t see it. And yes, it does exist!
As you know, tomorrow Alexei Navalny will be sentenced in the case of “slander against a United Russia deputy,” after which he will officially become a repeat offender, with the possibility that his suspended sentence could be converted into a real prison term.
More importantly, this Thursday the first hearing in the so-called “Yves Rocher case” will take place at the Zamoskvoretsky Court. The hearing itself will be closed (no one will be allowed inside), and most likely fairly quick, since it’s only a preliminary hearing.
**But. **I want all the crooks who are involved in any way in this fabricated case, and in the persecution and pressure directed at Alexei and his family in general, to remember this Thursday as the day when something went wrong™.
Better yet—I know what needs to be done to make that happen.
And you won’t believe how simple it really is. Attention: here comes a positive agenda, a constructive proposal, and an answer to the sacred question, “What is to be done?”
Ta-da!
**You just need to become visible. **In the most literal sense. Just pick anything from chetverg.navalny.ru and, one day a week, wear a T-shirt in support of Navalny or go out carrying a bag. That’s it. Seriously. Be just brave enough not to be embarrassed to show your support openly every Thursday. One day a week. Every week. Just put on a T-shirt.
As a simple but most important gesture of solidarity.
Look, our wonderful volunteer designers created lots of amazing prints with varying degrees of Navalny-ness. (Andrei, Slava, Yegor, Sasha, Natasha—thank you, you’re the best!)
You can download the prints and have them printed yourself at any print shop, and for the lazy, we’ve uploaded them to printio.ru. So you can go straight to the order page from our website.
An important point. Neither Team Navalny nor the Anti-Corruption Foundation receives any income from the items sold through printio.ru. All products are priced at cost. If you run a service that can make T-shirts cheaper and faster, write to chetverg@navalny.ru; if you’ve created your own cool print, write to chetverg@navalny.ru too.
Besides T-shirts and tote bags, we have another killer section—stickers. Since car stickers work not only on Thursdays, and since our polling shows that this is an extremely effective tool of visual presence, we decided to run an experiment.
We printed a small batch of stickers and are ready to mail you the sticker you want, at our own expense, to any city in Russia—on your word of honor that you’ll definitely put it on your car and send us a photo. We really believe in you.
One more very important thing. This project is not so much about Navalny personally. Alexei is simply the clearest example of how brutally people are now being forced into silence if they say inconvenient things too loudly. Navalny Thursday is simply a reason to come together and make yourselves visible. In the most literal sense.
By putting on this T-shirt or picking up this bag, you are not defending Navalny—you are defending yourself and your right to hold and express an independent opinion.
So, on April 24 (this Thursday), leave home wearing a T-shirt with our print, and post a photo with #navalny_thursday. And if someone asks, explain why you’re wearing that T-shirt. That’s all.
Honestly, this is very important, and it really works. Remember the Moscow mayoral campaign? We had no outdoor advertising, no paid TV airtime, no print ads, and no access to traditional media. But everyone remembers our volunteers. Because it was their work, their belief, and their support that brought Alexei nearly a third of Moscow residents’ votes in just two months.
Yes, this is a completely different situation now. We don’t have a clear X-day when the votes will be counted and the results announced. For an indefinite period, all of us will have to become a collective Navalny. But doing that once a week isn’t scary at all, and seeing that you’re not alone is incredibly inspiring.
Remember: there is no one but you. No one but you will talk to your parents, your friends, and your colleagues. You are, in fact, the super-secret invincible weapon of the Forces of Good. A weapon against which all Kiselyov-style propaganda (state TV propaganda associated with Dmitry Kiselyov) and all the idiotic laws of any “State Duma” turned “State Fool” are powerless.