This little blog is read each month by about 13,000 residents of Khimki, on their Khimki computers, sitting in their Khimki apartments:
(Google Analytics data) And this post is for them. Men and women of Khimki, if you don’t have any ultra-urgent business to fill the rest of this lovely Sunday, you can entertain yourselves with something socially useful. Walk over to candidate Chirikova’s campaign office and leave your signature in support of her nomination (you need a passport showing permanent registration in Khimki). Campaign office address: 76 Molodyozhnaya St., Khimki Map here. Open daily from 9:00 to 23:00. Campaign coordinator: Olga Pakhtusova, tel.: 8-964-526-6451 You can write to Chirikova herself by email: chirikova2012@gmail.com. Official website: www.echirikova.ru. You can view her campaign platform here (it’s a very sensible platform, by the way—not to mention that she’s the only candidate who actually has one). I also took part in collecting signatures on Wednesday, though rather symbolically—there’s no need to push especially hard, people are coming on their own with their passports.
It was certainly striking to see every standard tactic for disrupting a public meeting deployed against Chirikova all at once: they brought in homeless people, crazy old women, Nashi activists (members of the pro-Kremlin youth movement), and even some strange guys in masks I ended up having to talk to. The local police chief is standing right there, watching it all with satisfaction, which leaves no doubt whatsoever about who organized the whole thing. Well, that’s one more reason for all of us to help Chirikova however we can. She is the people’s candidate. By the way, the candidate from the Party of Crooks and Thieves is once again disguising himself as an "independent." Formally, there will be no United Russia candidate in this election. The crooks-and-thieves crowd understand that their party label would sink the candidate instantly. No matter—we’ll keep diligently reminding everyone what kind of candidate this is, and who is backing him.