Critical Issues Archive: Beatrice Motamedi

'So You Went to the Mega Rally. Now What?'

6 steps you can take for digital action!

by Beatrice Motamedi

Those who organized the July 25 rallies in support of Iran’s pro-democracy movement didn’t waste words.

It’s a “global day of action,” said Iran Solidarity, a London-based advocacy group, a day of “open defiance,” said Iranian.com, a San Francisco website that covers culture and politics, a “dia mundial de acción por Irán,” said Amnesty Mexico, which has launched a pro-democracy campaign there.

In New York, activists and intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky and Amy Redford, Robert Redford’s daughter, have staged a hunger strike to show their solidarity with Iranian protestors. Nobel Peace laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi and Rigoberta Menchu Tum also have lent support.

As an Iranian American, there’s nothing I want more than a mega rally. I want to see the world explode in a sea of green, with protests everywhere, including all of the cities where I’ve lived (Paris, Chicago, San Francisco) and in all of the cities where Iranian expatriates are forced to live because Iran doesn’t tolerate free speech (Paris, Chicago, San Francisco).

But I already know that when I wake up on Sunday morning, I’m going to have a political hangover — a familiar, foggy feeling that no matter how loudly all of us shouted for peace on Saturday, the day after it’s going to be up to those in Iran — university students, housewives, grandmothers and schoolteachers — to push it forward. The risk to them is tremendous. There is no media to report what happens. And there is no peace at the end of the day.

The truth is, even for Iranian Americans, this is not our revolution. Watch enough CNN, and it’s possible to think of what is happening in Iran as our own battle, their rage our outrage. But even those of us who still have friends and family in Iran know, this is not our revolution.

The movement belongs to people just like us, but not quite us. Nothing we do can approach the sacrifice that the young people of Iran are making each time they step out the door or tweet a message to the West. They are the ones who are in the streets, protesting and marching, speaking up and being beaten down, bleeding and stumbling. Yet still they hold up their cell phones, still they take videos, still they fight for free speech.

That’s as it should be. As Iranian Americans, we know that Iranians have a right to their own revolution — to go through that painful process of creating consensus out of chaos, of waging battles and losing them, of identifying their own founding fathers, mothers and martyrs. America has a long history in Iran, from the CIA plot to overthrow Iran’s first democratically elected leader in 1953 to former Vice President Cheney’s secret bombing blueprints. Now Americans needs to find a middle path, somewhere between supporting democracy and exporting it. The global rallies are a start.

But we can do more. Unlike Iran’s previous revolutions, this one is high-tech: thanks to Skype, email, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, we know what’s happening and we can communicate it widely. As the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf recently said, “Every Iranian outside of Iran is a representative of the people in Iran, a reporter.” By relaying stories and videos to policymakers, by working with media to keep the focus on Iran, and by ensuring the free flow of information via technology, we can shape a story and keep it alive. In Tehran, in Shiraz, in Isfahan, young people are raising their voices. We must make sure they’re heard.

Below are seven tangible, concrete, meaningful digital steps you can take to support democracy in Iran. (Coming up with a number of “tips” is a journalistic cliché, of course, but to those of you who recognize that seven is a sacred number in Persian culture, salaam). Most of these suggestions cost nothing but time. Choose what you can do, but do something. Protests in which teachers are shot and pregnant reporters are imprisoned have a way of dying out.

As for the seventh step, that’s simple. In a recent speech in San Francisco, Ebadi observed that there are 2 million Iranian Americans living in the U.S.

“If every one of them had five relatives or friends living in Iran,” she said, “imagine how many people on both sides want peace.”

Imagine.

Six Digital Steps:

1) Break the blackout —
Here’s a way to make sure protesters are heard: buy them some bandwidth. Avaaz, which means “voice” in Persian, wants to help Iranians by reopening secure, anonymous communication channels, especially anonymous web proxy services that would allow Iranians to circumvent those addresses blocked by the government. A $15 donation “can fund enough bandwidth ... to send hundreds of secure emails.” See www.avaaz.org

2) Get journos out of jail —
Thanks to the June protests, Iran has captured a title no country would covet: world’s top jailer of journalists. And while citizen journalism is commendable, that means much less attribution, verification and analysis: unlike a bylined story that incorporates multiple sources and acknowledges different points of view, anonymous posts and videos can be purely anecdotal and easily marginalized. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 30 news people were in Iranian jails as of early July, including print, online, TV, blog and freelance reporters. According to Amnesty International, at least one is pregnant. CPJ investigates disappearances and annually publishes a global list of journalists killed on the job. Donate at www.cpj.org

3) Sign an e-petition —
Activist and lawyer Shirin Ebadi has long called on Iran to join the International Criminal Court, so that human rights cases can be prosecuted. So far, Iran has steadfastly resisted the call. Now some are asking the United Nations to hold a special hearing on the arrests, deaths and torture that followed the June election. If you agree, add your voice here: www.ipetitions.com

4) Chat unfiltered —
Honest, authentic commentary on Iran is often hard to come by, but Iranian.com features live chats every Wednesday at 6 p.m. PST with noted authors, activists and others who often aren’t tapped by traditional media. Recent visitors include award-winning journalist Omid Memarian, and Tehran Gasri, a D.C.-based African-American-Iranian TV host. News, essays and posts from writers in Iran fill in the gaps in mainstream media coverage and communicate the depth and breadth of Persian culture. More information at www.iranian.com

5) Tell CNN to focus —
After June 12, CNN couldn’t cover Iran enough. But coverage is waning even though videos and posts show ongoing violence. Filmmaker Makhmalbaf urges Iranians and media watchers in the U.S. to call reporters and alert them to web content that might otherwise be overlooked. Suggest stories, comment on coverage and ask questions at www.edition.cnn.com or call CNN at 404-827-2600.

6) RT retweet —
Small wonder the Iranian government’s first victim was Twitter: the first signs of protest showed up on TweetDeck’s tag cloud long before they appeared on CNN. If you can read and write in Persian, you can do your part by learning how to RT. Here’s how: sign onto Twitter and search for tweets from Iran that you believe others ought to read. Copy or translate the text and resend it using your Twitter account. Begin your message with “RT @ username,” to show that you are relaying a tweet from another user; the username should be the original author, not you. Tech blogger Simon Owens bloggasm.org recently sampled 100 Iran tweets and found that each was retweeted an average of 57.8 times. As of July 21, the top 10 tweets on Tweetmeme, a website that follows what’s hot in the Twitterverse, all were about Iran. “It does show that a single tweet coming out of Iran can be seen by a massive volume of Twitter users fairly easily,” Owens writes. So get the word out — again.

Beatrice Motamedi