We. Must. Make. Them. Pay.

Can most people be declared second-class citizens?

Try declaring the majority of the country's population

but the people around you probably wouldn't be

very happy about it. But can the authorities

— actual officials sitting in their offices — publicly

say: most of you are rightless

outcasts? No, you'll say — how could they

do that? They'd be overthrown the very

next day. And yet,

that is exactly what is happening right now, without exaggeration.

Let's look at the latest poll

from a state-run institution, and it tells us:

United Russia's approval rating has hit

its lowest point in the past 13 years.

Thirty-two percent. That means 68

percent of people — the majority — want

some kind of alternative. They are all different, these

6 or 8 percent blocs: left-wing, right-wing,

nationalists, liberals — but all of them are saying:

we no longer want to vote for

United Russia candidates; we'll choose

something else. And right now,

Putin, Sobyanin, and United Russia are replying

to all these people: no, you will not

choose anything else. You are second-class people,

and therefore there will be no other candidates

for you to vote for.

This hasn't even just been said — it has already been done. On September 8,

there are elections in Moscow, but everything I'm saying

also applies to St. Petersburg

and to many other regions as well. But in

Moscow, for 45 seats in the Moscow City Duma,

several dozen independent

candidates were collecting signatures.

They were recruiting volunteers, and you know that perfectly well

because on this channel I

kept pestering you with my appeals

to give your signature for one of these candidates.

Each of these candidates

needed your signature to get on the ballot. We need

to coordinate

and vote together. Support

independent candidates; demand

their registration in Moscow, in St. Petersburg,

in Irkutsk, in Ufa, and in all the other cities

across the country. Only when we achieve this will we

win. And not a single one of them

was registered — all of them were removed from the election.

There were strong candidates there,

very strong ones who would have

won 100 percent, like Yashin or Sobol.

There were good but not especially strong

candidates — they would have had to fight for

their victory. And there were also

to be honest, downright lousy candidates

I wouldn't have voted for, because

I consider them cowards or stooges. But

some people liked them — and all of them

were purged.

And by doing that, they told all of us that we are

second-class people. The way they

were removed from the ballot turned into

a whole separate procedure

of massive humiliation. Real

people who actually exist and signed

were declared dead

or nonexistent. Look — all social

media is flooded with videos where people

say: I signed — why the hell was my

signature ruled invalid? Sobol

left

a signature and date in support of Lyubov Sobol.

I learned that

my signature in support of Ilya Yashin was declared

invalid.

That is not true, and

I personally wrote the date and signature, and the date and

signature were written by my own hand. The collector who came

was Ilya Yashin himself.

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Sobyanin's city hall brought in some kind of

crooks calling themselves handwriting experts, and

they literally just arbitrarily

took 500 signatures and declared them

fake.

And you can judge the sheer lawlessness

from one small fact. Here it is:

candidate Yashin gave his signature for

another candidate, Gennady Gudkov.

Yashin's signature was declared fake.

Then that same Yashin came to the hearing with

several dozen people whose

signatures had been ruled invalid —

actual living human beings. There they were, standing right there.

Plus he brought 140 written

statements from people who wrote: do not

dare declare our signatures

invalid — we gave them. And what

did they tell him, smiling to his face? We

are not interested either in those people in the corridor

or in their statements. We have a handwriting expert, we

have a police database. If they

tell us those people do not exist, then

those people do not exist. The commission hearing at which

Lyubov Sobol was barred from the election

was watched live by 50,000

people — more than any of my livestreams — because

it looked like a circus. Some

crazy old woman, the chair of the commission,

announced a minute of silence for certain

dead people who had supposedly signed

for Sobol. And today I would like — you don't have to

stand up — but almost a minute of silence...

[inaudible]

that you are staging here — these

scoundrels even had the nerve

to make accusations

after they had declared invalid

the signatures of actor Shirvindt,

Moscow State University professor Lukyanova, journalist Azar,

All these people later said:

what is even happening? We exist, we

gave our signatures, we wrote statements. I,

Ilya Yefimovich Azar,

hereby state

that I am of sound mind and clear memory and personally

entered the date and signature in support of

the nomination of Lyubov Sobol to the Moscow City Duma.

to the City Duma in District 43, but no — after all, we are all

second-class citizens.

That’s why they removed us from the election. And just to

mock all of us even more,

they said that our signatures

were so bad that the number of invalid ones among them

was even higher than for Spider from Korrozia Metalla (a Russian heavy metal band)

of Moscow, who wants to hang a new sun over the city.

It would be like a gigantic,

cyclopean sphere containing

a whole bunch of laser beams inside.

And to our independent candidates they say:

you know, even fewer people support you

than support him.

There are all sorts of enemies, for example, dark

forces that periodically do us harm,

for example, they throw obstacles in our way.

But against the backdrop of the fact that

they eliminated all the independent candidates who had genuinely

collected signatures, the Moscow mayor’s office

registered, on the basis of completely fake signatures,

whole batches of people like this Spider.

Do you see this wonderful man here? Look how

beautifully he has arranged the little stones on

his stomach. Don’t you recognize him? This is

a politician far more famous than

Yashin, Zhdanov, or Gudkov.

Because they, after all, were unable to collect signatures,

whereas previously convicted P. V. Trofimov

who works in the position of “calculator” — I’m not

joking, that really is what his job title is called —

“calculator” — is now a registered

candidate.

He will take part in the election. He collected signatures,

and Sobyanin, together with all his

thieving cronies,

looks us straight in the eye and says: yes,

these are fair elections.

Their “calculators” will take part, while you

and all your independent opposition

candidates can get lost. You don’t deserve it. You are

second-class people. And second-class

citizens is exactly what we really will become

if we put up with and accept all of this.

This will go on forever, and

everything will get much worse until

we learn to come out into the streets in

large enough numbers and stay on

those streets for as long as necessary.

Yes, I myself would rather not have to protest, but

what else is there to do in this situation?

We nominated candidates. They wrote

platforms, they have support, they

collected signatures — and we’re told: to hell with you,

make room for United Russia.

What else is left for us but to go out into

the street? Look: over the past few years,

this government has backed down

for one reason only: because people

went out into the streets. I’m not sitting in prison on

a fabricated case because in

2013 people came out and I was released

from pretrial detention in Kirov.

Very recently, church officials and bureaucrats

backed off from the city square because

people came out for many days in a row and were not

afraid of arrests. Drugs were planted on journalist Golunov,

but he was released as soon as

everyone spoke out.

We are the majority right there in the streets, and we do not need

any permits.

The authorities understand perfectly well what many of

us still cannot fully grasp:

there are tens of millions of us — and what do they have, police?

The National Guard (Rosgvardiya)? Yes, but even they are secretly on our

side, and they protect Putin and United

Russia only because there are

not enough of us. If half a million people stand in the

streets, all these guardsmen will be the first

to run back to their bosses

and tear the whole thing apart. So why should we

now let ourselves and our families be treated like nobodies?

We have found ourselves unprotected from those

who were supposedly guarding us for many

years. We need to take part in every protest.

There is no other way — big ones, small ones,

and stand there for as long as it takes.

The next big rally will be on Saturday,

July 20 at 2:00 p.m. on Sakharov Avenue.

It has even been officially authorized, by the way, although I

think we should already just stop caring about

any official authorization. I call on everyone who

does not consider themselves a second-class citizen

to come there and support the independent

candidates.

But besides that, another task now stands before us:

to make United Russia pay. That is exactly why

we came up with Smart Voting

in the first place — because we assumed that

decent candidates would be removed from

the ballot. Of course, we did not expect all of them to be removed,

but we must show that now

the principled position of any

decent person will be to organize

and vote against the United Russia candidate, for

some other candidate — even

a technical one, even some random outsider.

If we cannot express our opinion

by electing a decent candidate,

then we will express our opinion by showing the failure

of their system.

People should simply use the election

to hit the authorities and their candidates,

and show their dissatisfaction both by going out

into the streets and by masses of people heading to

the polling stations simply

to take revenge

on United Russia for the humiliation, by taking away

their deputy mandates. I expect you

to show diligence and creativity, and

every day to think: what can I do today

against Putin and

United Russia to make them pay for

considering me a second-class

citizen?

Register with Smart Voting right now,

and bring your friends there too.

And on the 20th, if you live in Moscow,

Come to Sakharov Avenue and take part in all

the actions

that independent

candidates are calling on you to join. They were thrown off the ballot

illegally, and the authorities must be held

accountable for it. Subscribe to our channel

— this is where the truth is told.