Mondoweiss reader Danielle Esfahani writes:
Like a lot of other folks with ancestral ties to Iran, these days I’m glued to my computer screen at all hours, compulsively refreshing news sites, blogs, and my Facebook page. Due to spotty and limited media coverage of events (I do like Andrew Sullivan and the Huffington Post’s live-blogging), I’ve mostly had to connect the dots in my understanding of the situation based on first-hand accounts from relatives in Iran. The revolution has been twittered, for sure, but also gchatted and yahoo messagered. And I have the Google chat archives to prove it.
Somehow, even from my safe vantage point here in Brooklyn, New York, I feel I’ve been swept up in the events happening in Tehran. Still at it this morning at 5AM, I told an Iranian cousin of mine, now living in West Virginia, that I’d read on a Facebook friend’s page that violence had just erupted in the Jamaron neighborhood. She promptly called her mother in Jamaron to tell her to stay in. Moments later the same cousin read somewhere else that a tank rolled into the Sharif University area. She called her brother, a grad student, begging him to leave his research project to return home to safety. How anyone could study in such a climate is beyond me, and I suppose either a serious testament to either studiousness or denial.
The degree to which Facebook has been utilized by young Iranians for organizing activities is staggering. In the past few days, the majority of my Iranian friends have taken up the now iconic “Where is My Vote?” image for their profile pictures. My Facebook newsfeed has been choked with updates in Persian on protest sites, reports of injury or death, places to avoid, etc. A friend in the diaspora community used Facebook to organize a massive protest in Toronto. Surely, more events will follow in the days to come.
As those of us far away from our loved ones in Iran scramble for information, we know there’s a long way to go before any of this gets resolved. Naturally, it’s all very unnerving to watch. People will be risking their lives daily from here on out and no one really knows what will happen in the end.
But, as worried as I am about their welfare, I am so proud of my cousins. They have truly taken ownership over this movement. It is clear that in their organizing they have regained some of the hope that they lost after the election results were announced. Like our parents did 30 years before, they are bravely and peacefully standing side by side in the streets because they love Iran, and they haven’t given up hope.
