Love and rallies

Ira and Tai became volunteers at the OVD-Info by chance. A quarrel, a little boy and riot police led to this

Taya: It was June 12, 2017. That day was a rally on Tverskaya. And the day before, Ira and I had a fight.

Ira: In fact, we did not fight, but parted. And on your initiative.

Taya: It seemed to me that we were just quarreling. In general, we went to the rally.

Rally

Taya: It was my second rally in life - before that I was only at the "occupy Abai" on pure ponds in 2012. But then my dad, a very secured person, rather strictly forbade me to go to protest promotions, fearing that this could damage his business. That day, a year ago, I went to Tverskaya with a friend. At first everything was peaceful, and then we somehow smashed us. I was alone in the crowd and decided to go away from sin.

Ira: I went there with my friends. It was simultaneously a rally of the opposition and some kind of official procession in honor of Russia's Day. In Tverskaya in one direction, in the center, participants in the “correct” rally were going on, and on the sides in the other direction - supporters of Navalny. We gathered for the opposition part, but came to Tverskaya from the wrong side, and around there were only some mummers. After some time, we decided to disperse: we were often at rallies and realized that this one, apparently, failed. They said goodbye, and I went back along Tverskaya towards Tsvetnoy Boulevard, where I live.

Taya: I got out of the crowd and went to the cafe. I knew that Ira was also at a rally, because I went with our common friends. And only I sat down at the table, as I received a message from one of them, Max: "Ira was taken, taken to a car zap, what is with her, it is not known." I immediately began to call him and ask for details. Like, why didn’t you keep track of how you allowed it. He said that they miraculously dispersed home and only then he received a message from Ira, that she was taken to a car carrier. And after that, her phone was already unavailable. I began to call her - the phone was still unavailable.

Ira: When I walked back along Tverskaya, I found the rally that my friends and I missed. It was already restless, a lot of riot police and barriers. At some point, I saw a woman with a child in front of me, who was dragged from each other two riot police. Mother cried, a little blonde boy too. I mechanically rushed to the child to push the riot police from him, but got a fingal in the eye. Then he grabbed me and led me to the nearest lane, and all these lanes ended in barriers and autosaks. Along the way, I only managed to write a message to Max that they took me away. After which the phone immediately sat down - the cord stayed the day before with Tai.

Taya: When I could not get through to Ira, I began to write to all my friends from the liberal media and ask what to do in such a situation. They all said as one-to call the OVD-Info . It seemed to me such an answer too formal, in all the memos and so it is written that we need to call the OVD-info . I expected insider information from them, something that only they know. But they said that no one had more accurate information about who where they took it. And I called. The girl answered me and in a very calm voice asked me to name the name of the detainee. I checked, immediately said that Ira was not in the system, so she was not brought yet and took away recently. The girl said that when she was brought to the department, she would call me, and if I first hear the news from Ira, she asked me to call them and tell how she was doing. I hung up the phone, and from this voice and these words immediately became calmer for me. It seemed to me that everything is fine, everything is solved and under control. That no tragedy has happened yet. I was only worried that she had no Moscow registration and that she recently lost her passport.

Ira: This is not me, but you lost my passport when you bought train tickets!

Taya: I bought them and returned the passport to you!

Ira: In any case, the passport has disappeared since then. But for some reason it did not bother me in Avtozak. When I was brought, there was already twenty people there. I was one of the last. In the hour that I sat there, I tried to consider the roasters of the riot police and find out why they detained me and where they would take me. There were no answers. And then some kind of low and chubby man, apparently their boss, put his face through the carrier-free window, poked me in me and still in two and said: "You, you and you are a march from here." And we were released. Of course, we hastened to leave, and the car gut with the others left.

Illustration: Anna Morozova for TD

I came home, looked at my face in the mirror, put the phone on charging and went to the shower. When she came out, a call came. He was a man from the OVD-Info, and he very politely asked if I were, where I was, what happened to me, did I remember who else was in a car carrier or some other details. And in the end, he even said that they were very sorry that this happened to me. And then the second call came.

Taya: although it became calmer after a call to the OVD-Info, but I continued to call Ira-in the hope that she would earn a phone. After a couple of hours, she answered - it was such a relief! She told what happened, and after half an hour I was already at her house.

Ira: Of course, we made peace that evening.

Taya: And after a couple of months I met Olya Nikolayenko.

Volunteers

Taya: We met in one of the children's camps where we worked together. Olya then just gathered a team of volunteers in the OVD-Info and, in general terms, spoke about what she was doing. Before that of our story with the rally, I vaguely imagined how it all works, it was too far from my life. And two months later, Olya called and asked if I wanted to become a volunteer. I agreed. Ira said, she also agreed.

Call me, call me

Ira: At first, Olya sent us a training program so that we would prepare. There were videos on YouTube, which show the procedure for the detention. On the example of the Decembrists - it was fun and remembered. There were also tables that need to be filled in the system when a person calls and reports about the detention. The column where the person is: in Avtosak, in the ATS. A column of comments: strangled with a scarf, selected water, beat. Many other columns. Big and very detailed table. And instructions for volunteers.

Taya: We started in October. Then the headquarters of the volunteers just appeared, and Olya became its coordinator. There was a big rally, we came in the evening. We sat on some boxes, there was no place, the Internet too-we handed it to ourselves from the phone. There were a lot of detentions and calls. We worked for several hours and left at night.

Ira: Since then we have come there several times. If the rallies are small or calm, then the OVD-Info team does not cause reinforcement of volunteers. Before each rally, they send a table with a schedule, and you can choose when it is more convenient for you to come. “OVD-Info” works throughout the country, so help is needed in the morning-this is the Far East, then the Urals, and by the evening Moscow and Peter. Information about the detainees enters either the hotline (people themselves call the people or their relatives), or through the “Red button” application (when a person is delayed, he reports this through the application - and we immediately see his data and place of detention and we can assume to which the department they will bring him).

Taya: All tasks are divided into full -time and absentee. If you are an operator on the phone, then you process calls in the office. There is also a chat in a telegram, where tasks periodically appear (decipher, write, translate) and the terms in which this needs to be done. And two buttons: “I will take” or “Not this time.” Volunteers do this work remotely. By the way, on the phone I have never come across those who are looking for loved ones, like me then. Only those who were taken.

Ira: And I came across. Mostly mothers.

Subtleties

Ira: At first it was difficult. When a person not only gives information about himself, but begins to ask what this or that article means, you do not know what to answer. I am not a lawyer, and I had to urgently climb into Google and look, because often there was no one to transfer the call to. And a person needs to help.

Taya: And for me, the main difficulty was how to show empathy. Recently, the OVD-Info, together with the Sisters Center, conducted a training on how to behave during a conversation. How not to panic, how to remain calm. At one time, the calm tone of the operator girl helped me a lot. It is always difficult for me to remain calm. When someone calls, cries and says that an asthmatic is sitting in a car zakak and he is bad, you can’t help. In this sense, the faster people will be brought to the department, the better. We have a chat in the Telegram "Transmission to the ATS", it works in all cities. There, coordinators write in which the police department what is needed: water, hygiene supplies, medicines.

Illustration: Anna Morozova for TD

Ira: By the way, when you talk with someone who sits in a car carrier, it would be nice to find out the names of everyone who is there. If all twenty people call, it will be difficult to process these calls, it’s easier to do it at once in one call. And then everything that will happen to people in this car carrier will happen synchronously: they will be made at the same time and, most likely, will be imputed by the same thing. It is also convenient to track. But here are its difficulties. Often a person is in a panic and cannot find out the names of everyone or is afraid to let the phone out of his hands so that everyone in a circle calls his name. The averaged portrait of the caller is a panicing 25-year-old young man. And I must tell him firmly: "Sergey, concentrate and say this and that."

Taya: And it seems to me that you have to be softer. On that day, riot police were yelling at that day, and so much stress.

Ira: I had a girl in my first duty, she called from Astrakhan. She didn’t even participate in the rally, she just passed by. The cops broke her phone and took to the station. Her father arrived, but since she was angry with her because of this detention, he decided to leave her at night in the site as a punishment. She was scared, we talked several times in the evening. I left at night and at that time did not know what was with her. Already when I left, Olya wrote to me that she was released home, her father still took her and that she called and asked me to tell me that everything was in order with her. I was so happy then. Even if you talked with a person only a few times, his fate is already not indifferent to you.

Taya: I somehow informed me that they brought a boy to the police department, who, according to the description, was very similar to a teenager, with whom I went to the camp several times. By that time he had just been 18 years old. I went to the department, there were unacceptable watches, but I already knew how to talk with the cops, and they missed me with him. I handed him water and food, and then connected his friends to the gear chat. I would not be able to know all this if it were not for my work in the OVD-Info. In general, since Ira and I have become volunteers, I feel that we are not only a couple, but also an ally. That we are doing the common thing. Before that case, I was outside the politics, and now I began to understand this and generally began to be more conscious. And she began to know more - both his rights, and where to go, and what to say. Now I understand that if if that, I can be useful to myself and others. From this you feel a little more control. True, I no longer go to rallies. I realized that I am a hundred times more useful as an operator on the phone than like a carcass in a massive.

Ira: And I think that you can volunteer and go to rallies. Depends on what the rally is for. By the way, the OVD-Info does not divide the victims into his own and strangers. We help everyone who turns.

OVD-Info is an independent human rights media project about political persecution in Russia. With the help of a hot line, he collects information about detention on public actions, publishes news and coordinates legal assistance to the detainees. The hotline "OTD-Info" (8 800 70-70-528) operates 24 hours a day seven days a week. Now there are about 200 volunteers in the OVD-Info database. In 2017, the project helped 2275 people in the police department, 438 people in courts and 48 people in the ECHR.

OVD-Info launched a legal bot -an interactive instruction for a detainee and an operational way of communication with human rights activists. And I also released the cartoon about how to behave when detained.

The project exists on donations. You can help him with both money and becoming his volunteer .