Iran
>Rooftops are good places to listen to a revolution
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Salar Abdoh recounts his time of vigilance and conflict in the post-election protests in Iran @ Guernica.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Frederick Douglass in a speech in Rochester, New York, 1857.
On a September day in Tehran I park my motorbike next to a sufficiently out of the way and shuttered grocery store, then walk a block before stepping into a sea of people who have come to demonstrate against what they believe is a stolen presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I am curious and wound up and probably more than a little eager for a bit of trouble.
The dense crowd, on the centrally located east-west main artery of Karim Khan Boulevard, moves with lumbering, ungainly focus; truly huge demonstrations like this are not unlike organisms, some parts of them in confusion and uproar, while other parts move with a beguiling measure of cohesion and focus.
A chant that I’ve never heard before rises on the boulevard:
Forget Gaza,
Forget Lebanon.
Only for Iran
We are willing to sacrifice.The wave of bodies snakes its way past Palestine Avenue and the chant is repeated. It is Quds Day, Jerusalem Day. The day that the regime busses people in to demonstrate against the “Zionist entity.” They have been doing this for many years; but this year the green banners of the opposition fly over the multitudes waving V signs. Throughout this summer of 2009 there have been other marches like today’s. But with the increasing crackdowns by the security forces and the imprisonment and disappearance of countless earlier demonstrators, no one thought the people would have the heart to come out again in mass. Yet here they are. The citizens of Tehran were told by the opposition leaders to be at the 7th of Tir Square at 10 a.m. and at exactly 10 a.m. it was as if the ground had opened up to disgorge a protesting army.
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