Dear friends, I am very glad to join you from New York, on behalf of the American Russian Speaking Association for Civil and Human Rights, that, among other things, has been rallying in our diaspora in support of Ukraine since the Kremlin's first invasion of 2014. I am here to support Boris in these dark times and our joint action in his defense.

I don't count myself as a socialist or a Marxist, and these labels themselves may not be especially useful - particularly so in our days of a neo-Nazi momentum, when not only labor rights, women's rights, minority rights are threatened, but also the basic foundations of liberal democracy and indeed, intellectual freedom. And you don't have to subscribe to any doctrine, you don't have to accept everything that Boris has said or written or what was said here today in order to appreciate the depth of his thinking - which has influenced many in Russia and around the world beyond the left; his intellectual honesty; his decency; his subversive wit (for which he has now been jailed); his true internationalism; and his global vision.

Since his first book that I read 35 years ago, titled The Thinking Reed, Boris writings have been a chronicle of decay - and, indeed, barbarisation - of Russian state capitalism under three regimes (and the term ‘state capitalism’ was applied to it not just by democratic left, but also by Andrei Sakharov). Not surprisingly, Boris was jailed under each of these three regimes, - even though he was never a leader of a mass movement or a contender for power. Yet each of them felt threatened by even a potential force that combined the ideas of social equity with deep, bottom-up democracy. And each of them started by pushing aside or splintering the democratic left - as happened in the 1990s to Boris’ initiatives and to the Social Democratic Party that Pavel Kudyukin co-founded and helped to build. And after getting rid of the left, they moved on to suppress all other opponents.

Nowadays, when some of the more famous heroes of opposition to Putin have been thankfully released to the West, Boris remains one of Russia's most internationally recognizable political prisoners. Around him, we can and must build a campaign with Western and non-Western governments and public opinion for his own and others’ release.

I was fortunate to meet Boris in my twenties at a congressional hearing convened by then-Representative Bernie Sanders. And over 20 years ago, it was my privilege to work with Boris on building a small think tank in Moscow; and traveling together to a Transnational Institute event (thanks to Fiona). With Boris, we jointly produced a collection of articles by Russia's progressive thinkers; and we demonstrated together against Putin's first war in Chechnya.

I hope we can all together chart a campaign of advocacy with Western and non-Western governments to help get him and other anti-war and pro-democracy advocates to be released. Thank you for your time and attention.