STATEN ISLAND — Russian feminist punk rockers Pussy Riot released a new song Wednesday inspired by the death of Eric Garner.
The video for the tune, "I Can't Breathe," begins with a slow pan of group members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina dressed in Russian riot police uniforms and being buried alive.
"It's getting dark, New York City," they sing. "I need to catch my breath."
The song — the group's first in English — also features American musicians like punk pioneer Richard Hell, who reads Garner's last words. Garner died July 17 on Staten Island after being put in an apparent chokehold by police who were arresting him for selling untaxed cigarettes.
The group — whose members were jailed for nearly two years in a Russian prison after staging a "punk prayer" inside a Moscow Cathedral in 2012 to protest President Vladimir Putin — explained on YouTube that they recorded the track in December after they took part in protests in NYC over Garner's death.
"This song is for Eric and for all those from Russia to America and around the globe who suffer from state terror — killed, choked, perished because of war and state sponsored violence of all kinds — for political prisoners and those on the streets fighting for change. We stand in solidarity," the band wrote on YouTube.
In addition to Garner's death, the video also protests Putin's military intervention in Ukraine and mirrors the secret burial of Russian soldiers who died in the fighting, the group told The Guardian.
"We really could not breathe for this whole last year," the group told the paper.
"Our previous ideas did not speak to what was happening in the conflict zone in Ukraine as we were realizing that Russia is burying itself alive in terms of the rest of the world. Committing suicide. Daily. And so the song 'I Can’t Breathe' is about us and our country as well. It is about Russia, too.”
The band members visited New York City last year, where they met with Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife Chirlane McCray to discuss prison reform.
Garner, 43, an asthmatic father of six, died while being arrested by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo on a Tompkinsville street. The medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide by chokehold. The incident was captured in a dramatic video in which Garner could be heard telling officer "I can't breathe" numerous times.
In December, a grand jury ruled not to indict Pantaleo for the death of Garner, a decision that sparked waves of protest.
Public Advocate Letitia James, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society and the New York Post have pushed for the release of testimony from the grand jury proceedings. Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan has been fighting the release, arguing it could dissuade future witnesses from testifying for fear of retribution.
