Pussy Riot, the Russian punk band that made international headlines when members were jailed for an anti-Vladimir Putin performance, has released their first song in English. The group recorded a tribute to Eric Garner, the black Staten Island man strangled to death by a white police officer.
The track is titled “I Can’t Breathe,” after the words Garner yelled while he was placed in a chokehold. For the video, the group is burried alive while wearing Russian riot police uniforms.
In an interview with The Guardian, the group said that the song is not only dedicated to Garner, but to anyone who has suffered from “state terror.”
“‘I can’t breathe’ – these are the last words of Eric Garner,” the group said. “Those words are his, but we hope they can also stand for us and for many around the world, for all who can’t breathe because authorities act with impunity and feel invincible and above the law in using power to humiliate, intimidate, hurt, kill and oppress. We’ve known, on our own skin, what police brutality feels like, and we can’t be silent on this issue.”
The all-female group told BuzzFeed that the song was written in New York during protests against the Garner decision. In December, a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer that killed Garner in July.
Members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned in 2012 after an anti-Putin performance in Moscow. They were also whipped and detained during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in February 2014.
screenshot from Pussy Riot YouTube Video