First of all you should know how much impact what your people have already done is having both in your country and the world. Iran is changed forever by what you/your people have done. Ahmedinejab will never be able to be quite as reckless or extreme again. If Khemenei is not replaced he will still always feel he is about to be. It is because of the courage of your people to speak out.
As to what you have done: I printed out your description of "what you did last night" and showed it to some friends of mine. I wanted them to be fully aware of what was happening. They were stunned, even though these were intelligent people who are usually very aware of what is going on in the world they were not as aware as they should have been until they read it. "It is very powerful" is what one of them said after reading it. I could see on their faces how effected they were by what you wrote because now it was no longer abstract. So you see, you are very important. You have done a lot. The people shouting on the roofs at night are also doing a lot. I know some have died. There are always some. When my country fought its civil war 34,000 men died in one battle alone so that everyone could be free. Hopefully there will be no more in your country than the few who have already died (even one is too many) but I do not believe their actions were in vain.
I would like to share two things I read today. They are from people who have felt impacted by what they have seen and felt a need to write about it. Both articles made me cry, but as you said about what you wrote I am not trying to make you cry. I want you to know how powerful what has happened already and the sacrifice and bravery of your people is. What Mechi said about hope is very very wise. If you keep your hope you have won. Your leaders know that. So should you.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/21/745286/-why-neda-matters-(updated)
why neda matters (updated)
by sunspark says
Share this on Twitter - why neda matters (updated) Sun Jun 21, 2009 at 03:58:22 PM PDT
I hesitated to click on the link.
Warning, it read: graphic video.
And I know myself, the woman who still, to this day, has tremendous difficulties with images of 9-11. But half a world away there were people who were suffering. Half a world away there were people whose peaceful demonstrations against a dictatorial regime that had stolen what had had been alleged to be a democratic election was suddenly turning violent, was suddenly turning deadly. I had been watching it all day in various forms: photography that had slipped out through the net, videos of clashes with the police, articles and live blogs that discussed the turmoil and the chaos.
And then there was this link. A woman dying in the street, it said. On camera, it said. Don't click it, I told myself.
But I did.
sunspark says's diary :: :: The video is indeed horrific and graphic. It begins just after Neda is shot, as several people, screaming, help her off to the side of the street. They lay her down, her father bending over her pleading in Farsi, "Neda, don't be afraid. Neda, don't be afraid. Neda, stay with me. Neda stay with me!" On camera, blood pours from her mouth, her nose, her eyes as she dies.
I am not embedding it here, but if you wish to see it, follow this link and scroll down to 10:22 AM Sat: Neda's death.
So why did I click on that link? Why did I make the conscious decision to watch something I knew would haunt me? Why did I choose to bring myself to tears yet again. knowing that these would likely be the kind of tears that never would leave?
Probably for the same reason that, in the wake of 9-11, I did watch that raw video footage shot by the documentary maker who was following that first-responder fireman that day. I have tears in my eyes right now even writing about it, but I sat through every painful second of it because thousands of people died there and thousands more lived through it and tens of thousands had their lives directly affected by it and in some way I believed I owed it to them. My comfortable life had not been broken by crashing airplanes. My family had not been touched. My world had not suddenly shattered beyond comprehension. The least I could do was bear witness.
So I watched that video then, as I watch the videos now.
In the course of yesterday I also watched (or more accurately listened) to two more videos whose power broke me down. They were not the various and seemingly endless videos of the Basij attacking demonstrators. They were each shot from rooftops or balconies. Their tones were completely different but they each conveyed the pain of the loss of safety, a pain that Americans should find so terribly, terribly familiar.
The first shows people running and chasing each other and a couple (the film-makers) commenting in Farsi. I do not know what they are saying; I have seen no transcript of this. But it does not matter. Listen to the woman. Listen to her pained, and then panicked, voice. Listen to her shock and horror as she cries and screams in the end in the one part for which I do know the translation: "They are breaking into homes! They're destroying everything!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogEqQBmr-9Y&feature=player_embedded
The other video is a quiet one, a nighttime video that has already come to be known as "Poem For the Rooftops of Iran." This video--all but invisible--is full of the background noises of a city under siege. And quietly, in the foreground, a woman's voice speaks softly powerful words that we too might ask in similar circumstances: how can this happen here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKUZuv6_bus&feature=player_embedded
I clicked on Neda's final moments, despite the absolute knowledge that I would wish I had not seen them, because in this rare personal finality, in the death of this girl who, I understood at first, was only 16 years old, I think there is the symbol for all of the freedom struggles everywhere. I clicked on it because my own daughters are 14 and 17, and I cannot imagine life without them, and when they strike out for some cause they believe in whether it is gay rights or environmental issues or what have you I never have to imagine holding their bleeding bodies in the streets. I clicked on it because too many people try to make political hay out of personal nightmares, and I need to remember what we all need to remember: the horror and pain in Neda's father's voice.
That is the cost of tyranny. That is the cost of war. That is the cost of oppression.
And even as I finish this, knowing that more Nedas will die before this struggle ends and that this is only one of many struggles before the world can find that elusive, impossible notion of peace that we all pray for, I know that I clicked on Neda's final moments as a stark reminder.
This is the price of freedom.
But why...why...does it have to be so?
***UPDATE: Corrected reference to Neda's age. An early and erroneous report had her at 16, but she was in fact a 27-year-old philosophy student.
And this:
http://www.iranian.com/main/node/68865
Iran's Rosa Parks
by Fred
21-Jun-2009
If pictures speak a thousand words, hundreds upon hundreds of video clips speak of trillions of words. It is undeniable; The Islamist republic of Iran is in trouble, deep trouble at that. And the kicker is the misogynist par excellence Islamist republic is being challenged not just by ordinary men but by women as well, you know the ones who are half the men, the ones who have been the special target of Islamists’ venom for the past thirty years.
There are those in the West who are somewhat surprised of the active, at times leading role the Iranian women play in the current gathering storm. If only they knew the role of women in the history of Persia, or given a slight chance their potential to achieve the unimaginable, they would have not been surprised at all.
There is no need to go back to antiquity, although there are plenty of examples there too, or go back hundreds of years to Safarid dynasty, just take a look at the crucial role the woman of Persia have played in the long march to achieve freedom for all of Iran in the past century.
Women of Tabriz and elsewhere took up arms and eventually defeated the almighty forces of the tyranny. Iranian women have always, always been at the heart of social/political movements of Iran. For love of God, given the freedom in the West, a self made immigrant Iranian woman went to space.
And now, seeing them in all their elegant Persian uniqueness standing up to Islamist cutthroats eyeball to eyeball, even at time shielding them from the vengeance of the angry crowds, one knows the days of the Islamists oppressing Iran is numbered. What Iranian men have individually known, and most have denied it openly, whoever crosses an Iranian woman has dug his own grave. The Islamist republic has crossed Iranian women for the past thirty years, world; meet millions-strong Iranian Rosa Parks.
So you see how powerful you really are both yourself and together with others?
I wish I could help. I want you and your people to be both safe and free. I think you are all incredible. Hugs.
