LIKE A STORM: THE INSURRECTION IN IRAN

LIKE A STORM: THE INSURRECTION IN IRAN

No one is waiting any longer: Iran has exploded and not even the Islamic regime is surprised.

Years of student strikes, militant street battles, workplace struggles, constant repression―and then a spark.

One spark to unleash the tidal wave of rage and despair that was once
confined to barely audible whispers behind closed doors.

Now the fury is here and everyone is in the streets, young and old, men and women, militant and pacifist.

CHAOTIC RESONANCE

The specter of ‘79 is colliding with the insurrections of Europe, but the flames of Iran burn far brighter than the 2005 uprising in metropolitan France or the Greek insurrection in December.

Everywhere the normal functioning of things has been paralyzed: people refuse to just simply go back to work, squares and streets are blockaded, universities are not functioning, police stations are looted, and everyday social relations are negated.

The human gears that everywhere allow any regime to function are now engaged in a total war that points beyond just stolen elections.

All of the established organizations within the conflict (whether in Iran or in exile) are exploiting it to build their own political power, for their own place at the roundtable.

But when has it ever been different? Their “politics” are always more of the same.

Some wear green like they wear the “Yes We Can” in America.
Is that all we want?
Can the world we want ever be expressed simply by a vote?

Some complain that there are no leaders, no one to direct the insurrection, but this is to the revolt’s credit. Its spontaneous and uncontrollable nature is exactly what has allowed it to spread so quickly and resonate so widely.

This is not about an identity, a minority, an issue, or a stolen election.
It’s about everything!

As Anonymous Sinners (Iranian hip-hop group) asked,
“What is it that we want other than freedom?”

THE DEMOCRATIC LIE

They have no future to offer us; the democratic lie can’t hide this.
The children of the metropolis are everywhere bound by common conditions, by lived experience; no more so in the West than in Iran. It takes the uproar and rage of an entire generation born outside of the democratic process to expose its illusions and false hopes.

There could be so much more than a regime change.
What if the insurrection doesn’t end?
What if the fires keep burning, and spread to the whole of society?

This is the real threat, the potential for revolution: that the return to the university, the workplace, and the home might not ever take place.

That the paralysis becomes total, that finally there is no going back…
Fundamentally, we must reach this point of no return.

JUNE 2009/ KHORDAD 1388

http://insurrectioniran.wordpress.com