How Reading a Blog, Having a Twitter Account, and a Small Act of Solidarity Change My Life
For weeks, I had been following the leadup to the June 12th, 2009 election in Iran. The mainstream news had hit me with a bombshell: They said that a majority of the Iranian people hated their government, wanted diplomatic and trade relations with the United States, and might ouster President Ahmadinejad in the upcoming election. None of this made sense. Didn’t Iranians hate us? Didn’t they just elect Ahmadinejad? It was time to consult the internet.
I discoverd the Tehran Bureau, an independant group of Iranian-Americans who were breaking down complex and paradoxical information for the Average Joe. I was hooked. With a new American President, and the prospect of a new Iranian reformist, peace and cooperation might have been right around the corner.
It didn’t play out that way. Ahmadinejad clearly rigged the election to avoid a recount, or an outright defeat, and my hopes for a new tomorrow were dashed…for about a day or so.
The Iranian people took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, braving beatings and arrests to voice their desire for freedom and democracy. Using Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, the images of the protests were escaping even the tightest government censorship. For hours, I was glued to the images of the protesters. Maybe change was right around the corner.
Early in the morning on Tuesday, June 16, 2009, I read an article on Tehran Bureau describing how Americans and Europeans could help the Iranian protesters by changing our Geotag location in Twitter to Iran and changing our timezone to Tehran time. Even though I barely used my Twitter account, and didn’t even remember my password, I figured that this was a small token of my appreciation for the bravery of the Green Movement.
Within hours, thousands of others had done what I had done. We joined the #iranelection tag on Twitter, and for a while it actually felt like we were in Iran. My email inbox, my twitter screen, and my internet browser were scrolling information as fast as the user-interface in the Matrix movies. We were engaged in full scale cyber-warfare against a foreign nation. Within days, I had Tweeted news of the protests, analyzed Youtube videos of Iranians chanting in Persian, and detailed the areas where Iranians were reporting that they were being attacked by government supporters. I had even received emails of the location of Iranian tanks, which I put on Twitter just to have an American tell me that he put them on a Google map, and now I could see a satellite image of downtown Tehran with the location of tanks, roadblocks, and riots; all from halfway across the world, with the help of a laptop and wireless internet. Like the song says, “I know change gonna come.”
Since that day I’ve had contacts disappear, and sometimes even reappear. I’ve traded jokes with people who are now in jail, and I’ve watched video of the people whom I was trying to help as they were beaten, tear gassed, and sometimes killed. As I fell deeper down the #iranelection rabbit hole, I learned the hard way that the Iranian government was playing for keeps.
Now, Dissected News is my new blog, totally dedicated to promoting freedom, dialogue, and discussion accross internation borders. I’ve tried to make it a blog for the 21st century, where big ideas are approached by cool heads and reason rules the day. I’ve dreamed that it might become an international crossroads for new ideas and peaceful collaboration.
May we all work together to win the “hearts and minds” of each other, so that we will see freedom and peace in the 21st century.
Azadi ~ James the Hype
