This piece comes from the Waging
Non-Violence website (9/24/12) and was written by Sahar Namazikhah:
The Green Wave washes over a movement
in hibernation
As the debate in Washington on whether
to strike Iran advances — at the continued behest of Benjamin
Netanyahu — the memory of the 2009 popular uprising against Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection recedes. Ironically, the same
people who were championed for taking to the streets are now
potentially facing bombs and protracted war. It’s as if the world
has no memory — not only of the Iranian people, whose courage was
the source of daily coverage in the Western media that summer, but
also the potential of people power to affect real and lasting change.
The recently released documentary The
Green Wave is an invitation to remember. By recounting the early days
of the Iranian Green Movement through the eyes of two fictional
students and bloggers (the composite of over a thousand different
entries in Iranian blogs), director Ali Samadi Ahadi tells the story
of the Iranians who poured into the streets, screaming “Where is my
vote?” At the same time, however, it also shows what happened next:
kidnappings, beatings, stabbings, shootings and disappearances.
While the The
Green Wave offers a reminder of the remarkable people who risked
their lives for democratic change, it falls short in offering a way
forward. There is no smile and no hope, but only fears as the
audience is taken to dark rooms and torture cells — ultimately left
feeling unsure of how this movement even formed in the first place.
Knowing that history helps explain why, after three years of violent
repression, Iranians still seem eager to rise up once again.
Despite the perception that the
movement was led by elite and opposition leaders, it was the populace
that started the demonstrations. Only after this mobilization did the
reformist leadership join the protesters and help coordinate
demonstrations and strikes.
Some analysts argue that one of the
most obvious errors of the Green Movement was the dependence of the
populace on these leaders. As evidence they point to the decreased
number of demonstrations following the house arrest of the two major
leaders of the movement, Mehdi Karoubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Reviewing the Green Movement’s
successes and failures demonstrates that it is in the fifth stage of
Bill Moyer‘s Eight Stages of a Social Movement. According to
Moyers:
"After a year or two, the high
hopes of movement take-off seems inevitably to turn into despair.
Most activists lose their faith that success is just around the
corner and come to believe that it is never going to happen. They
perceive that the powerholders are too strong, their movement has
failed, and their own efforts have been futile. Most surprising is
the fact that this identity crisis of powerlessness and failure
happens when the movement is outrageously successful — when the
movement has just achieved all of the goals of the take-off stage
within two years."
This final point of Moyers' is a
positive one for the Green Movement and is bared out in my own
interviews with Iranian activists. There is a strong and common
belief, especially among young green activists, that “the movement
has not died.” They believe that the movement is alive, but in a
state of hibernation. The government seems to believe this as well,
monitoring even minor activists, their families and friends. It knows
full well the strength of this movement, its skill at organizing
public demonstrations through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well
as reaching the outside world in spite of all efforts to block global
electronic communications.
This current state of hibernation has
not been helped by the international economic sanctions imposed on
Iran. Many people are too distracted by their daily needs being
threatened to focus on the movement. Meanwhile the main activists,
organizers, planners and thinkers who would be working to move beyond
the current situation are regularly placed in prison.
If this state of hibernation is to be
broken, the movement needs to re-strategize and remind the populace
of its beliefs, values and interests. Serbia’s Otpor movement did
just that a little over a decade ago. Not unlike Iran today, Serbia
was enduring U.S. economic sanctions and struggling with domestic
pressures. But Otpor overcame the fears created by former Prime
Minister Slobodan Milosevic by using tactics that put the government
in a position where no matter how it reacted — either by ignoring
the protestors or cracking down on them — it would lose. This
strategy empowered the populace and led to increased participation
and ultimately a general strike, which forced Milosevic out of power.
While some critics and analysts from
outside and inside Iran continue to complain about the lack of
strategic leadership and campaign organizing in the Green Movement,
valuable time is being lost. They should instead be helping to
strategize on how to wage a long-term campaign for the movement that
will spur successive moves leading toward the achievement of social
and political reforms.
Where The Green Wave fails in
portraying hope and the positive aspects of the movement, it at least
succeeds in reminding the world that Iranians desire to secure their
own peace and justice. The story of how they awaken from hibernation
and move forward in the aftermath of torture and suppression will be
found in the next green wave. After all, the tide may go out, but
waves will continue to roll in.
To know more, visit the website,
http://www.thegreenwave-film.com/
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