Actually, yesterday there were three meetings with voters. At Ulitsa Podbelskogo metro station, Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad metro station, and Sokolniki metro station. In Sokolniki, we decided to hold an open meeting. Usually, we don’t publicize these events too heavily, so that only local residents attend and we can calmly discuss local issues. This time, though, we posted about it on social media a day in advance, and not even all that aggressively: I didn’t personally announce it on LiveJournal or Twitter. We were curious ourselves to see how many people would show up. Several thousand people came, so thank you all very much.
I spoke about how the previous meetings had gone.
I also talked about the bills we had prepared. Then I took questions. There had been some doubts about that: a Q&A session supposedly isn’t really the right format for meetings like this. But we decided not to back away from an important principle of the campaign: any voter should be able to come to a meeting and ask the question that matters to them. What if the answer to that question determines their choice? All in all, the meeting with voters in Sokolniki was a success, but of course it would not have drawn the kind of attention it did without our little helpers from the police and the Moscow mayor’s office. Their usual approach is: “People have gathered in the street? Don’t allow it! Start writing up reports!” The police kept trying to cut the sound on the stage. They made repeated rushes—about 20 men at a time—toward the generator, tried to cut the cable (an astonishingly stupid idea; they could have killed someone), and pulled other ridiculous stunts. At the end of the rally, a whole crowd of OMON riot police officers (special police units) led by a police chief climbed onto the stage. They invited me to “come along while things were clarified.”
They drove me around nighttime Moscow for half an hour with the siren lights on, then dropped me off on 5th Parkovaya Street, saying that no one had detained me at all. Very polite, all of it. You can find photo reports from the event here: http://navalny.ru/events/events_116.html http://www.novayagazeta.ru/photos/59676.html http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/photogallery/142461 http://prosto-vova.livejournal.com/2319731.html http://ph.livejournal.com/20588.html Reports: http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/59677.html http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/15566621/navalnogo-zaderzhali-posle-vstrechi-s-izbiratelyami http://www.newsru.com/russia/26aug2013/navalny.html http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25085704.html We are entering the home stretch of the campaign. We really need you right now. One final collective effort, plus each person’s campaigning work, will get us into a second round. Let’s push harder. We need volunteers for campaign cubes, of which there are now many more. We need volunteers for other projects as well; you can choose the one that suits you here. Sign up and make your personal contribution to our shared victory.