Many
of you may not be aware that the current wave of people standing up to struggle
against the forces envincing to enslave them under absolute despotism and
establish a system that serves the needs of the many rather than the greed of
the few began not in the West, nor in North Africa, nor in the Levant, but in
Iran.
Before
the rise of the Corbynistas, before the Berniecrats, before the Occupy movements,
before the indignados, before the Israeli social justice movement, before the
Arab Spring, there was the Green Movement of Iran, which at the time the Arab
Spring began was still ongoing, though winding down, even as the people of
countries from the western end of the Maghreb to the eastern borders of the
Levant began to stir. It was the
movement which for a little while gave us the phrase “Going Iranian” to
standing up to our oppressors and saying to them, “No more!”.
This
is an abbreviated version of something I wrote back in December 2009 at the
most intense period of the Green Movement.
At
the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, I had been aware of events there on
and off for the previous couple of years since I have always been an avid
consumer of news. I watched the events
of the revolution and its aftermath unfold, then like all Americans found
myself riveted to the Hostage Crisis.
During
this time, I got my first job, at Ponderosa Steakhouse on Brainerd Road. I was the dishwasher in the restaurant’s
scullery, and was partnered with an Iranian college student from the city of
Babol in the province of Mazandaran, who was the steak cook; every shift I
worked he worked also. Even though most
Americans were gleefully singing “Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Iran” to the tune
of “Barbara Ann”, I went out of my way to reach out to him.
Upon
learning he was unable to return home due to the hostage crisis, I got him to
teach me a few words of Farsi so that maybe hearing them would make him a
little less homesick. Since we were working most of the time, the conversations
were limited to just a few words but I always liked to see his face light up.
Of
course, there were also the few occasions when he called me up drunk and
depressed, speaking rapidly in Farsi. It
was somewhat amusing but mostly heartbeaking. The friendship, by the way, was two-way; it
was my first job and he went out of his way to make me feel welcome.
After
he graduated from the community college in June, he moved away to continue his
education and I never saw him again. Seven
months later, the hostages were released, and I hoped he got to go home at
least for a visit to see his family.
In
the years that followed, hearing news about the Iranian Cultural Revolution,
the harsh repression of dissent, the crushing of the Left, the imposition of
sharia, the Iran-Iraq War, the Iran-Contra Affair, and the student movement of
1999, I often worried about my friend and hoped that he had managed to remain
in the States.
I
kept up casually with news from Iran in those and later years, the mass murder
of the Tudeh, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, and other leftists, the displacement of
Ayatollah Montazeri, the rise of Ayatollah Rafsanjani, and other events. But Iran did not really come back into focus
for me until the events of 9/11.
Like
many, I stayed glued to the TV for weeks. One report that stood out vividly for me was
about one million people holding a vigil in Tehran in support of the victims
and their families. I felt pride in the
citizens of my friend’s homeland.
Then
came Bush’s State of the Union address in January, and I was shocked and
appalled to hear Iran named as one the the three members of the “axis of evil”.
That was the beginning of the
belligerent propaganda coming out the neocon White House that helped put the
final nails in the coffin of President Khatami’s reform program and bring to
office Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad with the illegal assistance of the Revolutionary
Guard and the Basij in his first stolen election.
In
2006, I joined the now defunct Yahoo360. After not doing much with it at all, I logged
on one day to find a comment left by Sarah, a college student in Iran. With an exchange of comments and mails on the
Yahoo360 system, I’d made my first Iranian friend in over 25 years. Through her, more followed, never more than
25 on Yahoo360, all Iranian except two. With
my new friends I discussed history, Iranian poetry, even facts about Shia
Islam, but never politics. All were
reluctant to discuss their daily lives. I could sense, however, their
frustration, their isolation, their loneliness. It made me think of the words in the first
stanza of Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."--You end up like a dog
that's been beat too much 'til you spend half your life just covering up. A sentiment all the Daniel Blakes of the
world can relate to.
In
the spring of 2009, most of them began expressing optimism, many being involved
with Mir Hossein Moussavi’s campaign for president. I felt a sense of hope for change, a hope
which they all expressed. With them I
eagerly anticipated the outcome.
Watching
the election be stolen on 12 June, I felt depressed and robbed. When media commentators, unaware of the deep
levels of discontent across all levels of society in Iran, expressed surprise
at the enormous number of demonstrators pouring out into the streets across the
country that evening, my reaction was to shrug my shoulders as if to say, “What
did you expect?”. Then came the harsh
crackdowns on the night of 13 June and it was more like, “Holy shit…those are
my friends! Oh my God…”.
For
the next several weeks, my TV stayed tuned to CNN as I sat at the computer
sending out messages of support to a growing number of connections and
frantically searching out all across the internet for news and information. In addition to activities on Yahoo360, I emailed
all the information I could to every Iranian contact in my address book. Upon learning that Yahoo360 would go ahead
with its planned closure, I repeatedly warned and gave notice to all my friends
on the network and told them to spread the word so that everyone could stay in
contact with the outside world. The rest
of the summer, I followed events all day long on a variety of sources including
Youtube and Twitter. Once Yahoo360 shut
down, I began posting to Facebook.
Regarding
the nuclear issue, as much anti-nuke as I am, I couldn’t care less about it in
the situation with Iran. It is a
chimera, a façade, a St. Elmo’s Fire, shiny car keys jingled to distract the
masses, the masses of every country involved. How about we deal with huge stockpile of nukes
possessed by the State of Israel first? I
don't care about Iran for the sake of the U.S., or for the sake of the world; I
only care about Iran for the sake of Iran, for the sake of its people.
Seven
and a half years ago, I wrote, “Iranians need to know that they are not alone,
that the world is paying attention. They
need information about what is going on in their own country because they can’t
get true information in their totalitarian regime. They need to know that the rest of us humans
support them.” That goes for the
Iranians then and now, and for the people in every country of the world
suffering under plutocrats who look at them as if they are food and the
oligarchs who enable their kleptocracy.
Since
writing this back in December 2009, by the way, I discovered that my friend
Mehdi, now using his first name Daniel, is alive and well, and living in the
United States.
Why
did I do it? Why was I so involved in
the Iranian Green Movement? Because
people should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid
of their people. I did it because I am a
Terran, a citizen of Earth, and Iran is part of my home, and all Iranians are
my brothers, sisters, and cousins.
Esteghlal!
Azadi! Jomhuri-e
Irani! Esteghlal!
Azadi! Edalat-e Ejtemae-e!
Rooz-e ma khahad amad, omidvaram. Our
day will come, inshallah. Keep the
faith. Peace out.
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