Happy Earth Day (video)

Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, John Gonzalez

In an EARTH DAY special, Democracy Now! looks at the history of the global environmental movement.

The story is told in the sweeping new documentary called "A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet" (airing tonight on PBS).

Extended highlights from the film show New York housewives who take on a major chemical corporation that polluted their community of Love Canal, Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales, to the struggle by Chico Mendes and Brazilian rubber tappers to save the Amazon rainforest.

The film’s Oscar-nominated director Mark Kitchell explains, "We were really looking to tell stories of the movement. We thought it would be a more engaging and impassioned approach to what are very difficult subjects. Usually environmental films, no matter how good they are, are an eco-bummer....These people succeeded against enormous odds. And that should give us some kind of hope..." More

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Pussy Riot to be freed early

Wisdom Quarterly; Freepussyriot.org

Pussy Riot supporters everywhere don balaclava masks (msnbcmedia.msn.com)

  

Nadya was previous missing (Guardian)

Pussy Riot is an anonymous Russian feminist performance art group formed in October 2011. 

Through peaceful public performances that voice how basic rights are under threat in Russia today, while expressing the values and principles of gender equality, democracy (self rule), freedom from religious oppression, and freedom of expression that are contained in the Russia's Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the CEDAW Convention.

Pussy Riot supporters (scpr.org)

Members were serving a harsh sentence on charges of “hooliganism” for their one-minute performance on Feb. 21, 2012 in a priests-only section of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The investigator’s report claimed the performance was an act of "religious hatred." The intention of the performance was actually to draw attention to the special relationship between Pres. Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. There was also a punk "prayer" to the Madonna, the Goddess or feminine divine, to drive Putin away.  

Amnesty was just announced that will free the members early -- as well as freeing the Greenpeace demonstrators arrested on false charges for a peaceful action to call attention to drilling for oil in ecologically sensitive area previously uncontaminated by the petroleum industry.

Early release

Two early release possibilities for both Masha and Nadya

RAPSI reports that the court that sentenced two Pussy Riot members to prison for committing hooliganism in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior overlooked possible grounds for mitigating...

Masha's mother heads to Nizhny Novgorod + Nadia's husband heads to Krasnoyarsk

RAPSI reports that Nadya or Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are subject to a recently approved presidential amnesty and may be freed before the New Year, attorney Irina Khrunova told RAPSI on Wednesday....

Freepussyriot.org advocates for release along with these supporting organizations: Wisdom Quarterly, The Voice Project, The Voice Project, Amnesty International, Austrian Green Party, European Women’s Lobby, Free Muse, Human Rights Watch, Index of Censorship, PEN International, Russia’s Human Rights Council, Russie-Libertés, Riot Grrrl Berlin, Shatter Japan...