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The Spectacle Blog
Hundreds of Iranian Americans, shouting “Democracy” and “Where’s my vote?” marched in Washington on Sunday to protest the election results in Iran.
The demonstration began outside the Iranian Interests Section in Washington at 11 am, but after about an hour a police officer asked that the group to disperse. Instead, a number of DC police cars escorted the protesters as they marched down Wisconsin Avenue, through Georgetown, and eventually ended at the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial.
The views among those who gathered were not monolithic by any means. Some people I spoke with supported Mir-Hossein Mousavi as an incremental step toward change in Iran, while others believed that the entire Islamic regime needed to fall altogether for real change to occur. A smaller contingent waved the Shah-era Iranian flag and argued that the current regime needed to be replaced by a monarchy. At times, the exchanges between the Mousavi supporters and pro-Shah individuals turned heated. But at the minimum, there was a general consensus that the election in Iran on Friday was a sham.
“We want to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran and say we reject the results,” said Babak Talabi, of McLean, Virginia, who helped organize the protest. “We expect the governments in the West and the news outlets in the West to reject the ‘official’ results.”
Talabi was born in Shiraz, Iran and moved to America in 1987, when he was seven years old. He said the protest came about spontaneously, through Facebook and text messaging. It was partially an outgrowth of an effort, called “Our Campaign,” to get Iranians living in America to cast absentee ballots in the Iranian election.
He said they were making four demands on Iran: to release all political prisoners; reopen all forms of media that were shut down in the past few days including cell phone service, text messaging, Facebook, and the internet; investigate fraud in Friday’s elections; and hold new, fully transparent, elections.
“The freedom and democracy of the Iranian people has been demolished, and this is one major step, one major last stand that we have to do to show that we are not happy, and we are not going to take it anymore,” said Mason Darvishin of Great Falls, Virginia.
Darvishin, who said he moved from Tehran 27 years ago, when he was 10 years old, said that while Mousavi may not be ideal, he’s an improvement over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Mousavi is a liberal individual within the group of this regime and any step forward for the Iranian people is better than dealing with somebody like Ahmadenijad, who has set us 10 steps back,” he said. “So we would like to do this in a smooth transition, in a democratic way, and getting the moderates in front, slowly, inside of the regime without going through bloodshed of a revolution.”
A younger female who asked not to be identified made a similar point more concisely. “Right now, Mousavi equals democracy,” she said as she marched holding a photo of Mousavi with the caption, “Elected president by the people of Iran.” She added, “Baby steps.”
Another female demonstrator who asked not to be identified because she’s scheduled to visit Iran in a few weeks went further, saying while Mousavi is better than Ahmadenijad, the whole regime needs to collapse for real change to happen. She said she’s been in touch with cousins in Iran over the past few days. “They’re not going to stop protesting,” she said. “They’re calling this Iranian Revolution 2.”
Eric Foulidi, who said he was born in Iran but moved to America 40 years ago, held a Shah-era flag and said that the younger Mousavi supporters were naïve.
“Thirty years ago our young people made a mistake and brought this regime,” Foulidi said. “Thirty years later, today, another young people of Iran is making another big mistake.”
He continued, “Everything is corrupt over there. Mousavi is corrupt. We know that from 10 years ago. And these young people who are 20 or 25, they don’t know that. I don’t know what’s happening in their mind to think Mousavi is going to change anything. It’s not going to happen.”
Instead, he said he supported a kingdom, which he insisted could be democratic.
“Iran and the Middle East needs a monarchy,” he said. “It cannot be presidential over there. The culture in the Middle East does not like presidential. It’s not Europe, it’s not America.”
Yet another protester, Saed Salehinia, shouted “down with the Islamic Regime of Iran,” but wanted to replace it with what he said would be a “free, secular, and socialist” government.
“Mousavi is not a reformer,” Salehinia said. “People who say that, they are either charlatans or ignorant. Mousavi was in power for 10 years and he was in charge of the biggest political massacres in first 10 years of Iranian government.”
Salehinia said he was jailed three times by the Islamic government while living in Iran, but escaped through the northwest border in 1997 and was granted asylum in the United States. He identified himself as a member of the Workers Communist Party of Iran.
Note: Below, I posted a video I shot of protesters marching down Wisconsin Ave. You can hear people driving north honking in support of the demonstrators, and can see a police vehicle in the background escorting the group. Quite a contrast between a free society that welcomes people’s rights to voice their opinions and the images coming out of Iran of the brutal Iranian regime beating down protesters.
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Pauley| 6.14.09 @ 5:54PM
Hmmm. Reminds me of ACORN and the election of 2008.
Jumpin' Jellybeans| 6.14.09 @ 6:53PM
And the degree of difference between the new Black Panthers "protecting" a polling place and the Iranian dictatorship is what?
Daisy| 6.14.09 @ 7:04PM
Please, God, help the Iranian people and give them courage. Walk with them during this perilous time. Amen.
MattSwartz| 6.14.09 @ 7:06PM
I agree wholeheartedly with the people who say that Iran should revert to a monarchy. I think that would bring out the peaceful tendencies of the Iranians and push the other, violent ones to the background.
A monarch has to plan ahead, because he wants to pass a good country down to his descendants. An elected leader doesn't have to look past the next election, and so starting a distance-of-urination contest with Israel looks more attractive than it would otherwise be.
Blacque Jacques Shellacque| 6.15.09 @ 2:10AM
All of this argument about who won and "stolen" elections matters not one whit, and a couple of people in the article do seem to get it. The fact is, the mullahs in Iran are in charge, and in the end, nothing is going to happen that they don't want to happen. Even if this Mousavi person had won and he was a genuine reformer, any proposals unpalatable to the clergy would almost certainly go nowhere.
If the lot of the Iranians is to improve, then the mullahs have to go.
Roy| 6.15.09 @ 9:20AM
Blacque Jacque - that's exactly why it DOES matter - now the people will realize that fact.
You may well be right about what would have happened if Mousavi had won fair and square and been allowed to take office. But it will be a whole different story if he takes office now. He would know that he got there through the support of the people over the unelected mullahcracy. It would be a huge setback for the dictatorship.
Heather| 6.15.09 @ 11:28AM
The mullahs and religious ministries in the middle east control 'government'. Royalty is subject to their influence just as 'elected officials' are.
For example, one of the major contributing factors to the current middle eastern political issues we face in the US including terrorism is that the King of SA was seen as a weak and immoral leader earlier in his reign by the ministry in Saudi. In order to protect his throne, he appeased the ministry zealots by taking a harsh stance against pretty much anyone who disagreed with the ministry - Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc. This religion based hatred of other cultures dictated by the mullahs and ministries bred figures such as Bin Laden - a member of SA royalty. 9/11 is directly linked to the political climate created by that earlier period of appeasement of Muslim extremists in the 1940/50's.
Mullahcracy is an apt title. Until the people of the middle east manage to establish governments whose interests are those of the people instead of the ministries, there will be no peace. More appeasement and yadda yadda on the part of the US only increases their grip.
However, it has become very stylish among the youth of the US as of late to support such zealots in the middle out of ignorance - Obama voters.
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.16.09 @ 2:01AM
ommenters seem not to be bothered by so-called "Iranian Americans" protesting the election results in a foreign country. Do we not heed Roosevelt's warning that “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”
What disturbs me even more is that any American gives a damn about what happened in these elections whatsoever.
One asinine statement with no basis in reality at all is this by Heather :
“For example, one of the major contributing factors to the current middle eastern political issues we face in the US including terrorism is that the King of SA was seen as a weak and immoral leader earlier in his reign by the ministry in Saudi. In order to protect his throne, he appeased the ministry zealots by taking a harsh stance against pretty much anyone who disagreed with the ministry - Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc. This religion based hatred of other cultures dictated by the mullahs and ministries bred figures such as Bin Laden - a member of SA royalty. 9/11 is directly linked to the political climate created by that earlier period of appeasement of Muslim extremists in the 1940/50's.”
First Heather, there are very few, if any at all, native Christians or Jews in Saudi Arabia. Even if there are were any. They are in no position to influence the government at all. Bin Laden was created by the CIA during the Cold War, not “Mullahs or ministries” as Sean Hannity or whichever college drop-out your getting this information from claims. If a “political climate created by that earlier period of appeasement of Muslim extremists in the 1940/50's.” lead to 911 and is directly linked, why did it take so many years for an attack to occur? Bin Laden says he attacked us because we put bases on the Arabian Peninsula to defend Freedom (Oil) in the Persian Gulf War. And does this “1940/50's” date not exactly coincide with when we started intervening in that area of the world and using the “political climate” to prop-up those we found most profitable to America? Heather, Didn't we support Saddam for awhile too? Wasn't he a secular Arab and killed a lot of those evil Persian Muslims with those WMD chemical weapons too?
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.16.09 @ 2:09AM
One more question: Aren't you the same "conservatives" (I put in quotes out of respect for actual conservatives who may read this blog) who continually complain that protesters should "get a job", "take a shower" or "get a life"?
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.16.09 @ 2:09AM
One more question: Aren't you the same "conservatives" (I put in quotes out of respect for actual conservatives who may read this blog) who continually complain that protesters should "get a job", "take a shower" or "get a life"?
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.16.09 @ 2:10AM
One more question: Aren't you the same "conservatives" (I put in quotes out of respect for actual conservatives who may read this blog) who continually complain that protesters should "get a job", "take a shower" or "get a life"?
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.16.09 @ 2:10AM
One more question: Aren't you the same "conservatives" (I put in quotes out of respect for actual conservatives who may read this blog) who continually complain that protesters should "get a job", "take a shower" or "get a life"?
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.16.09 @ 2:11AM
One more question: Aren't you the same "conservatives" (I put in quotes out of respect for actual conservatives who may read this blog) who continually complain that protesters should "get a job", "take a shower" or "get a life"?
Chris| 6.17.09 @ 11:17AM
Message to all Iranians, "take back what is yours"
Don't give up!
Jeremiah Whitmoore| 6.17.09 @ 8:19PM
Iranians...you are an example of courage to others held in bondage by theocracy, pseudo-democracy and dictatorships. I pray that you and yours become free! I also pray ( in the days that will surely come), that truly-informed American patriots will show half the courage of the Iranian protesters in standing up against our own perceived-benevolent-yet-progressive-fascist government that is growing evermore tyrannical and increasingly subverting the original intentions of America's Founding Fathers as originally penned in our Constitution.
seyed hamed| 6.18.09 @ 5:00AM
in the name of god
im iranian.but government in iran is not good for people.people scare of police & government now.
Johann| 6.19.09 @ 3:30PM
My sincere condolences to Iranians who have suffered and and have been murdered for their need for truth and liberty. People are barely waking up here in the US, slowly but surely, to the fact that sweet sounding campaign promises are not necessarily the "change" they thought they might get. A democratic republic with TRUE checks and balances was/is the best hope for a nation's prosperity. It has been replaced here with a progressive fascism, after they orchestrated an unforgiveably negligent watch over investor greed and the Federal Reserve's manipulation. The check and balance watchdogs are being silenced and there are fewer and fewer that will question the ill-fated path we are being set upon. "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson
truthseeker| 6.20.09 @ 7:42PM
The results aren't as "unclear" as we've seen it made out to be. In fact, there are many poll results from before the election that we have access to. This article describes the truth in detail:
http://internationalinsights.blogspot.com
Steve Stockton| 6.23.09 @ 3:46PM
The USA has become so divided politically it is ridiculous. It doesnt really stand as one country anymore. Sean Hannity will go on and on personalizing the martyr in Iran but what does he have to say about the Kent State students killed by the National Guard. I am pretty sure he would say . oh they were some stinking hippy college students going against authority. My dad died in WW2 for this crap? Sean Hannity worshipping at his shrine of Ronald Reagan?
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Adult Toys| 9.14.09 @ 4:39PM
Iran has already suffered an enormous brain drain since the revolution and it's only going to get worse.
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