New Pussy Riot Music Video “I Can't Breathe” Dedicated to Eric Garner

Two members of the punk provocateur band Pussy Riot have released a new music video dedicated to Eric Garner, the Staten Island father whose death during a confrontation with NYPD officers last summer sparked protests across the nation.

A video for the song, titled "I Can't Breathe," was posted online Tuesday and features bandmates Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova dressed in Russian riot police uniforms and being buried alive.

The pair repeatedly croon, "It's getting dark in New York City." They reference Garner's death several times; at one point, American singer Richard Hell can be heard repeating, verbatim, the 43-year-old's final exchanges with police before he was put in what the medical examiner called a fatal chokehold. 

Garner's death on July 17, along with the death of Missouri teen Michael Brown a few weeks later, inflamed tensions between police and the public in the New York City. Those tensions bubbled over in December, when a Staten Island grand jury decided not to charge NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner's death, sparking several days of protests in the five boroughs and across the nation.

In a statement accompanying the video, Pussy Riot says the song is dedicated to Garner "and all those from around the globe who suffer from state terror."

"I Can't Breathe" is the group's first song in English.

Alekhina and Tolokonnikova were detained in 2012 for staging a protest in one of Moscow's largest cathedrals. They were convicted for extremism, but were released several months short of their two-year sentence in Dec. 2013.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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