My run-in with the cops yesterday (which everyone is sick of hearing about, and me most of all) distracted attention from the actual leafleting campaign in the metro.
Meanwhile, I think it went well. We needed to stir the swamp of general apathy a bit and, with the help of our most active and committed volunteers, remind everyone that marches of many thousands that put political pressure on the authorities do not come together by themselves. They require the work of many people.
And it is exactly the kind of work people often do not feel like doing, but no one is going to do it for us. So we slung our bags of leaflets over our shoulders and went into the metro to campaign among the public.
“We have no counts here” ©, so everyone has to go. If you call on others to do something, do it yourself.
By the way, I was very glad that Boris Nemtsov also agreed without hesitation to go hand out leaflets. He had a laugh about it with the volunteers — a former deputy prime minister campaigning in the metro — and then got on with it.
In fact, offline campaigning is much easier and less intimidating than people tend to think. Everyone reacts either positively or not at all. There is almost no negative reaction.
It was chilly outside, but those who agreed to go out on street pickets did a great job.
You can see the leaflet we were handing out here; the demands set out in it are straightforward and supported by everyone.
Several campaigners really were detained by the police, but almost all were released after a “preventive conversation.” The only unlucky ones were those taken to the station together with me and Kolya Lyaskin. They had to spend several hours stuck in the precinct’s “Lenin room” (a Soviet-style political education room) under portraits of Putin and Kolokoltsev. We will provide everyone with legal assistance in filing complaints and so on.
Today was the first day it became possible to submit an official application for the “SPRING” march, and this morning we did so:
We should receive official approval soon, all legal obstacles to campaigning will then be completely removed, and at that point we will need to redouble our efforts.
Sign up to volunteer for the march. If we stay home, the party of war and corruption will always win.