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Blogger leads Russia protests

There can be no denying that social media can play a role, and a significant one at that, in the protest movement.    Just reflect on how social media has been harnessed in the Arab Spring.   No more can governments totally shut down people "conversing" with one another.

Now, as The New York Times reports, a blogger in Russia is leading protests against Putin and his henchmen.

"The man most responsible for the extraordinary burst of antigovernment activism here over the past week will not speak at a rally planned for Saturday, or even attend it, because he is in prison.

Cut off from the Internet, Russia’s best-known blogger will have to wait until the next morning, when his lawyer will take him a stack of printouts telling him what happened — whether the protest fizzled, exploded into violence or made history. At a final coordinating meeting for the protest on Friday evening, where a roomful of veteran organizers were shouting to make themselves heard, a young environmental activist turned toward the crowd, suddenly grave.

“I’d like to thank Aleksei Navalny,” she said. “Thanks to him, specifically because of the efforts of this concrete person, tomorrow thousands of people will come out to the square. It was he who united us with the idea: all against ‘the Party of Swindlers and Thieves,’ ” the name Mr. Navalny coined to refer to Vladimir V. Putin’s political party, United Russia.

A week ago, Mr. Navalny, 35, was famous mainly within the narrow context of Russia’s blogosphere. But after last Sunday’s parliamentary elections, he channeled accumulated anger over reported violations into street politics, calling out to “nationalists, liberals, leftists, greens, vegetarians, Martians” via his Twitter feed (135,750 followers) and his blog (61,184) to protest.

If Saturday’s protest is as large as its organizers expect — the city has granted a permit for 30,000 — Mr. Navalny will be credited for mobilizing a generation of young Russians through social media, a leap much like the one that spawned Occupy Wall Street and youth uprisings across Europe this year."





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