A Freedom fighter who is already free

“To Tehran khaylee shooloogh shodeh” my mom says to me as I enter her place and kiss her cheek while taking my shoes off. It’s a statement that most of us Iranian-American kids (who have managed to hold on to a tiny bit of our Farsi) are far too familiar with. Literally it means ‘Tehran has gotten really busy’, but what she really means is that the protests have started back up.

My ears perk up as she continues to talk about the most recent unrest, walking towards the kitchen with the smells of fenugreek and dried limes wafting in the air; I have been here before. This cluster of emotions, the feelings of fear and anticipation, start to creep up from the pit of my gut as I settle into a dining chair and prepare myself, all the while thinking; ‘Could this time really be it?’ before even knowing any of the details.

I was born in Tehran in 1991, and came to the US in the second grade after a short stint living with my family in the United Arab Emirates. My whole life, whether I wanted it to or not, has been influenced by the fact that I am an immigrant. Of course every immigrant story is very different, but culture shock plays a remarkably similar role in all of our lives. The desire–if not desperate need–to assimilate, make yourself small, make yourself palatable to those who make you oh so aware you aren’t really from here. Even when you’ve polished off the accent and can do the perfect ‘cali-coastal’ cool girl talk, you can never talk-away your history, your background, the ancestors from far away lands that you carry with you in the curls of your hair and the tan you have all year round.

I grew up ashamed of the things that made me different. I wanted to look like the little girls playing in the Bratz™ doll commercials or getting slimed on Nickelodeon. I told people I was “Persian” when they inevitably asked “Where are you REALLY from?!”. Sadly all the Americans I grew up around knew about Iran was what they had seen on the news. I couldn’t blame them for not knowing us for our tea, food, and poetry. I found ways to cope with this; milking the whole “Persian like the cat” or “Persian like the rug” that Biggie Smalls rapped about, clinging to the small and obscure bits of representation that existed in pop-culture. With these answers I hoped I could satisfy the questioner and go back to being Sara, the girl who is really good at jump rope and loves to watercolor. Now as an adult, I know I was trying my best not to feel ‘othered’ and although it has taken me time, I forgive my younger self for her sincere attempts to be in any way cool, while also surviving the bullies in my school…and in my mind.

As she settles in at the kitchen table, a pot of Ghorméh sabzi simmering on the stove, my mom continues: “This time the girl’s name that was killed is Mahsa (Jina) Amini, she is about your age, and so beautiful. She wasn’t even ‘Tehrani’, she was visiting family from out of town and they took her in for ‘inappropriate hijab’.” I shudder, I can only imagine what her last conscious hours of life must have been like, the notoriously rough morality police…what did they do to her?

Peeling a cucumber while looking at me with bloodshot eyes, my mom pauses and then says with a shaky voice; ”She died a couple days later in the hospital and a photo of her parents crying outside of her hospital room was just leaked.” The same cluster of emotions rushes through me every time my mom gives me one of these updates; a combination of dread, sorrow, guilt and I’m ashamed to admit; hope. She reaches for a sprinkle of salt and places the plate of fruit, a love language in my culture, in front of me and my husband who, although not Persian, understands from our body language and my small bits of translation between thoughts, what is happening. He has been there through an experience like this before, and although it is always so devastating, we live through these atrocities every few years, the last time being when they killed Neda in 2009.

Neda’s passing led to more protests in Iran and around the world, much like Mahsa’s. It was the first time I participated in protests with my family in Los Angeles. My mother raised us on stories of her and her friends at the forefront of protests when the Shah was exiled and the chipping away of women’s rights began. Looking at black and white photos of these young women desperate to hold onto their rights, I feel closer to these women now than ever before as I watch my generation fight for women’s rights here in the US. Seeing LGBTQIA+ rights constantly under attack and the parallels of fascism play out, I cannot help but fear for my chosen home, the history that can so sinisterly repeat itself.

Seeing I needed a moment to process the details (and weep), my mom got up from the table to let the steam out of the rice on the stove. So much was going through my mind but most of all, I was embarrassed that almost a week after Mahsa’s death, I had not heard about any of it. I pride myself on keeping apprised of major global stories, but here I was, my own motherland in a state of crisis, and I had been oblivious. As we continue to bombard her with questions, my mom reaches for the remote and turns on her Persian satellite TV, and on every Iranian news channel is the photo of Mahsa in the hospital, and the limited details of her story being repeated every hour.

My husband manages to say out loud what I am screaming in my head; “How is this not on the news? How is this not everywhere?”. My response, thoughtless; “I don’t know”, but I did know. Mainstream media in the US has never been quick to cover the plight of the Iranian people, nor is it beneficial to the US government to have further unrest in the Middle East. That, along with how this might affect oil prices was enough to keep Mahsa’s story out of the news, and most Americans blissfully unaware of the hellfire that was about to rain down on 20,000+ protesters bravely starting down the grueling and deadly path towards freedom.

After a tearful and uncharacteristically quiet lunch, we watched a few more Iran International segments, with the Persian diaspora of economists, political scientists, and activists zooming in from their respective parts of the world to talk through the uprising and what the next few months could bring. As I heard their takes and educated myself on what the ideal next moves should be, I ironed out my marching orders. There was no question in my mind that I would put everything I could into this movement from afar. I had no idea how big this movement could get, but I could feel in my bones, like much of my Persian friends in the diaspora, that I had a responsibility to my people and whatever was in my power as the freedom fighter who was already free, I would do:

Step 1 — Be their voice

Although social media was not my favorite and I have a massive problem with consistency, I knew this would act as the main method of communication with the protestors brave enough to record and send updates and stories from the ground. I quickly found myself in the middle of a new digital community that made me feel seen in a way I never had.

Mahsa’s movement has taught me so much, but one unexpected thing I’ve learned is that my Persian identity is a far larger part of me than I ever even knew. Finding myself in a community of young Iranians in the diaspora all over the world, we all had our yearning for ‘home’ in common. Those of us who will never be fully American or European but also have been isolated from our Iranian identity. Not enough of either thing, in an in-between land, looking for others who can relate.

This revolution changed that for me. I found my home in my fellow activists, I found belonging in our love for our people and our culture. People like Elica Lebon and Montreh Tavakkoli, who had made lives outside of our homeland, suddenly used their precious freedom around speech and assembly to be the conduits for our counterparts on the ground in Iran. I learned from and looked up to them and countless others who became my world in a time where few people in my friend group fully understood what I was going through. Battling through mourning, compounded with every new name that came out.

Unlike them, I had a very small following, but still, I knew that that was beside the point and work needed to be done. Every morning I woke up with a mission; to find out what happened on the ground the night before while I was asleep, from a myriad of sources that soon became my regular digital stomping grounds, and post updates for those who STILL, weeks into the revolution, were not seeing anything on their TVs.

I had friends from college, friends from childhood, co-workers from all the different places I had worked in my career and people who hadn’t spoken to me in years, reaching out, asking questions and telling me I am their only source of information for what was happening in Iran. All the while, seeing the Iranian activist accounts I follow, begging places like the BBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, The Times (NY & LA) to cover the stories of Nika Shekarami, Hadis Najafi, Sarina Esmailzadeh and Kian Pirfalak (amongst countless more whose names we still do not know).

We, as a digital army, from LA to Paris, tagged these media outlets, begging for them to show the world what the Islamic Republic was doing to Iranians. Shooting directly into crowds of peaceful protestors, putting demonstrators in unmarked vans and disappearing our young people with no accountability. Eventually, several weeks in, when they could no longer ignore us, and knew we weren’t going anywhere, when they saw #MahsaAmini trend globally with over 80,000,000 tweets did we get some air-time. Now the governments of the democratic nations of the world had to act…now that the world saw the atrocities, the war crimes happening before their eyes, they had to stand with us, they had to hold these terrorists accountable…that was the next logical outcome.

Step 2 — Battle the Propaganda

One part of building a resistance that you often don’t realize until you are in one, is that most of the logic you expect from the world goes out the window. Seeing the coverage or lack thereof was just the start of a cultural uphill battle that I was ill-prepared for but imagine more experienced activists are far too familiar with. The PR was not what I anticipated would take up a majority of our energy and time, but that is the turn things took when the Islamic Republic, a few months into the protests decided to release to international media organizations that “the morality police has been abolished”.

At first glance, I could see how my well-intentioned friends who were watching me fight daily reached out with a “OMG Yay! You must be so happy and relieved!”. Those of us who know this regime intimately and have watched their contortion of reality and propaganda over the past 4 decades knew what this meant. They needed the international backlash and heat off of them and said a thing to make those naive to their atrocities think that action was taken as a result of public request. We knew this meant they would create a force even more brutal, even more heinous and even more strict if things blew over.

We fought this narrative and reminded people that the law had not changed and protestors were still being disappeared, beaten, blinded, shot and killed in cold blood. Nothing on the ground had improved, yet the world now had an excuse to look away. This news was followed by countless other unfounded attempts to silence the alarm bells we were ringing. As more protestors were arrested, more were killed and new hashtags emerged, we knew it would only become more grim.

Knowing what would transpire if eyes began to look away from the situation, we knew we couldn’t let up. Protests, op-eds, more hashtags, more posts shared, more content created, more, more, more. We were a relentless, decentralized group of freedom-fighters who knew that if this revolution died, what remained of the soul of our country and culture would be snuffed out with it. This is the closest to tasting freedom as this generation of fighters has ever come, we were not going to let the work and sacrifices of the young people we lost be in vain.

Step 3 — Keep the momentum alive

It is hard to believe it has been a year since this conversation with my mother. It feels like yesterday that she told me with a shaky voice that she can’t even recognize the beautiful place she grew up in. I’ve never had the privilege to exist in a free Iran. An Iran that valued the contributions that women made to government, to culture, to art. But even still, I can picture it. I see it in the smile of Samaneh Asghari, I hear it in the lyrics of Toomaj Salehi, I feel it when I sing Shervin’s song with fellow protestors in LA and see our counterparts on the ground in Zahedan and Ahvaz sing along too. I feel closer to it each time I see Masih Alinejad on another western media station speak the names of our lost but not forgotten youth.

Every time I see Mahsa’s beautiful smile painted on another mural; she reminds me that we have come a long way and although our work is not done, progress has been made and minds have been changed. We freedom fighters, those of us in the diaspora, have the privilege of keeping this momentum alive at little to no risk of harm, and this privilege is the fuel behind this article, behind art created for this revolution, and behind the countless protests we will continue to hold for as long as it takes. The world has no choice but to hear us, see us, watch us fight and in the best case, join our fight!

On September 16th, the one year anniversary of Mahsa’s death, the diaspora as well as the freedom fighters of our incredible homeland will be coming out in mass protests all over the world to remind everyone that we are still here, this revolution is alive and well and we will not stop until we are free. Those of us in Iran who are disenfranchised by the government daily and those of us who are never free of the calling to go home. To breathe the air and eat the fruit from orchards our ancestors planted. Iran, the magical land of intricate rugs and sour cherries. The land of Ferdowsi, Rumi and Omar Khayyam who encouraged us to follow love and happiness above all else. To be drunk with the essence of the lover and dance like the dervish without inhibition. The culture and values of Iran, the ancient customs we have kept alive, the recipes we have eaten for millennia; it’s all there. But none of us can enjoy it, feel it, access it until it is free of the shackles of the monsters who have held it for ransom for 44 years.

The most impactful way to support them is to show them we are fighting alongside them, and the most impactful thing that non-Iranians everywhere can do is stand with us. Keep this movement alive, show the governments of the world that this is not an Iranian problem to be solved, it is a human rights problem, the most human problem, the fight for basic human rights. The fight to uphold the idea that all human beings deserve the right to joy, happiness, a voice, speech, assembly, and the right to pursue happiness, whatever that pursuit might look like. Please join me and my community in this fight, we need you now more than ever before.

Below are a few ways to show your support for the freedom fighters of Iran:

1.) Join a rally, vigil or protest near you! You can check @middleeastmatters.info for locations of activations near you and @diasporaforiran has put together a drive of protest signs created by Iranian artists and activists that you can download for free and use day-of.

2.) Sign the open letter by Iranian and Afghan women, international lawyers, and global women leaders urging countries to recognize the crime of gender apartheid. The aim is to expand the international understanding of apartheid to include gender hierarchies, not just racial ones as a way to expand the set of moral, political, and legal tools available to mobilize international action against and ultimately end the regimes that are oppressing women because of their gender.

3.) Support the Mahsa Amini Human rights and Security Accountability Act (or the MAHSA Act for short). This is a bill that was first introduced in the US in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022. Its aim is to hold the Islamic Republic’s leaders accountable for ongoing human rights abuses in Iran through the enforcement of sanctions. It was passed by the US House on September 13th of 2023 and will be moved to a vote in the Senate. Let your Senator know you want them to support this bill!

4.) Sign the Change.Org petition urging the Islamic Republic to put an end to the executions of protestors. Those convicted of crimes were often not given the option to have a lawyer or thier lawyer present and trials lasted an average of 15 mins before death sentences were handed down. More can be learned about these trials here via Amnesty International.

5.) Donate to organizations doing work to protect, support financially and document on the ground. This is vital for convictions that may come after the fall of the Islamic Republic at the International Criminal Courts:

• Center for Human Rights in Iran is an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2008 to protect and promote human rights in Iran by researching and documenting human rights violations across the country as well as disclosing them to the public through News and Art.
• Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) is a non-governmental non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran. They do so through the promotion of public awareness of issues concerning democracy and human rights in Iran. Through its programs of research, documentation, publications, and outreach, the Center hopes to help restore the dignity of Iran’s countless victims of human rights violations.

6.) And lastly, #BeTheirVoice! More than anything the freedom fighters on the ground in Iran need us to be their voice outside of Iran and disseminate their messages and stories as they continue to fight for freedom. This is the one instance where “Social Activism” makes a massive difference and on many occasions has saved the lives of protestors awaiting execution or sentencing. So look for posts from Iranian activists and share the messages they are disseminating throughout your platforms!

There are countless accounts on different social media platforms that provide videos, photos, stories and breaking news as information comes out of Iran. Some accounts I follow are below but this is not a comprehensive list and there are countless accounts out there doing amazing work, these are just a few:

• @iranrights (Instagram)
• @action_for_iran (Instagram)
• @from___iran (Instagram)
• @diasporaforiran (Instagram)
• @AmnestyIran (X/Twitter)
• @HRANA_English (X/Twitter)

#Jin, Jiyan, Azadi! #Zan, Zendeghi, Azadi! #Woman, Life, Freedom!