Iranian protests in cities across America
June 21, 2009 by admin
Filed under All Blogs, Politics & Activism
At South Coast Plaza In Costa Mesa, Iranians marched Saturday morning just as the first videos from Iran began to show on CNN.
“I had no doubt in my mind they they would protest this morning,” said a woman named Parisa.
She also had been thrown in jail in Iran. She told me that every protester there has at least one story of being abused in Iran.
Well dressed and sharply intelligent with degrees in mathematics, she speaks with clarity and with a soft power behind her eyes. This is not about being anti-Islamic, she said. This is about the feeling of betrayal. The feeling that the Mullahs told the Iranians that they would have a Muslim country and freedom. That Iran would balance the separations of state, religion and personal faith when the people revolted in 1979.
But now Parisa feels that Iran controls its people as if they were foreigners in their own land.
“We had a revolution to say we didn’t want a king and we ended up with a King anyways.”
She holds duel citizenship in Iran and Canada. When she goes to Canada, she said they see her Canadian passport and let her right in. No lines, no questions. They welcome her back as a citizen. In Iran it is different. She are questioned, grilled and a suspect.
“I wish I could feel like Iran was my country. That’s what this is about.”
On Friday, the supreme leader used his sermon to tell the opposition that if any more protests happen, the protesters will be responsible for the bloodshed.
Maybe, right now, hundreds of thousands of Iranians are deep in prayer, washing and saying the oaths of a martyr and staring at the door they will exit to what may be their death.
Democracy. Freedom. It is something Iranians are dying for.
Will those who claim that last weeks Iranian election was fixed walk out of that door, step out on that street? Will the government blink and hold fire, or will they seek to crush their citizens?
On Friday evening in Irvine, Iranian-Americans gathered on the street and held candles. In the moments of silence the gravity of the situation weighed down on their minds as the smell of the candles filled the silence.
A woman named Elnaz thought about her friend who was shot as she protested the day before.
“I was surprised that she protested. She was such a quiet person,” Elnaz said quietly. “I wish I was there hand in hand with the families that are loosing their children.”
Another woman, Katiana, said she was thinking of how Iranians are protesting in silence and peacefully and still getting killed.
“This memorial, these candles are for those that are marching and are going to march knowing that they will die,” she said with tears welling up in her eyes and voice cracking.
“It’s really emotional for me,” Katiana continues. “Iranians are risking their lives for what they believe.”
Sorror, also at the vigil, thought about how one of her cousins is serving his mandatory military service right now. Another cousin is a protester. She imagines neither may know tonight what they will do tomorrow.
And so tonight, they held up their lights in honor of their people and in respect for the choices and consequences of their families decisions.
It was a vigil that called for more action and held on to what may be a diminishing hope and dire consequences if the protests continue.
And it was a vigil held with the knowledge that in a few hours many, some think thousands, may die in their stand for their beliefs.
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(Protest in Irvine on Wednesday, June 17)
On every corner of Jamboree and Barranca, hundreds of Iranian Americans held up their signs, chanted and sang as if the massive protests in Iran had just ripped the duct tape off their own mouths.
To some younger Iranian-American protesters, Iran is the place they visit every year. A place they prepare to answer questions properly after stepping off the plane or be thrown in jail. To the protesters over 30, Iran is also the place that they feel cheated them out of their homeland.
These protesters looked at the events happening in Iran and felt the idealism with the masses of bodies, the screams, the baton wielding police, the broken bones and the blood. Together on June 17, they chanted for someone to change anything. For their voices to exist somewhere.
They stood silently at the drive through of the McDonald’s and at the In ‘N’ Out Burger. With determined and yet silent eyes, they stared at the drivers, waiting to be seen. In the end, their hope was to be seen by their own government.
“People want to be heard, we voted and we want our vote counted. That’s all this is,” one man said.
Across green signs they asked,”Where is my vote?” But maybe the signs should have read, “Count me! I am somebody! I refuse to be invisible!”
There was no consensus here of what Iranian-Americans support. Most said they did not support Mousavi. Others held signs that said, “Mousavi is our president.” There was only consensus that the pain from what the protesters refused to call a government, and instead only called a regime, had caused.
“We are all in pain,” said one women. “Iranians feel a pain in our hearts.”
A BBC Photographer of Iranian descent stopped taking her pictures long enough to agree that this was not about Mousavi. These protests in Iran and in America are about the inner frustrations of not being added into the equation of how life should be in their own home and streets.
“Yes these protests are from 30 years of karma. Karma for making me look at the ground when I would talk to a man,” said another woman as she rushed into the crowds.
A college aged protester ran by with a sign that contained an entire Persian poem from the 12th century titled “Bani Adam.”
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
The Persian poem hangs on the walls of the UN today.
“If any human is hurting you should have compassion on him,” the professor said waving her sign at the passing traffic.
“People have been unhappy for 30 years as they have constantly been living in oppression,” one protester said. “Things need to change. Iranians have tried to find happiness from within closed doors, but they cannot express themselves. They are limited in everything they do. Iranian people really do embrace freedom in every way. But they don’t have it. And they won’t have it until this regime is gone.”
I looked up and saw the victory and peace signs reaching out to the cars at the stop light and wondered what it’s like not to be counted.
