our history

This is a translation of a blog that was circulated widely and carried, still carries our hopes and dreams and illustrates well the good will and simple aspirations of this movement in Iran, and how much it reflects a global consciousness and inclusiveness, a sense of being part of the global community and suffused with the world, Iranians feel they are global citizens, even though they live under severe embargo, and can’t get a visitor visa in many places.

Chapter One

When the history of this century is written, the first chapter will start with us.
Probably somewhere in the introduction they will say that before our movement in this century other things happened too, September 11th, the Iraq and Afghanistan war. But they are all remnants of the old century, with twentieth century tools like planes and rockets and bullets, and a twentieth century dialogue. And then they will write that the first chapter was ours because we were the true offspring of our century, our dialogue was the beginning of the dialogue of the third millennium.

Then in the beginning of the book they will write that the social movements of the 21st century are the offspring of modern communication and right there they will say ours was the first social movement to wholly use the modern technology born of this century. Perhaps there will be a section dedicated to how these technologies changed the structure of societies and how they changed perceptions on social class, distribution of work and production and distribution of wealth and leadership and social management and even the concepts of the world about lasting human values.

Perhaps on that same page will be a picture of the first headset, and the founder of wikipedia, facebook, blogger, you tube, podcast and perhaps even their statues will be erected in town squares. The subtitle to the pictures will probably read: the faces that built the 21st century. Right there they will write that up to then, communications were one-sided, someone would write and papers would publish and people would read it or one person would talk and the rest of people would look at him. Or someone would order and lead and the faceless masses would follow him. They will write that the distribution of wealth, information and power was hierarchical and then they will write, in bold, that the new communications technologies, made these relationships horizontal in society. These communications empowered the base of the hierarchy so much that it rose itself to the rank of the tip of the hierarchy. It made it possible for people to be in connection to each other, receive and send news and exchange information and talk and hear and see and be seen and find new ways to work together, produce new thought, critique and move forward.

Then on top of the page there will be a picture of us with our green flags. They will say they were the first social movement that “everyone” was a leader in, the person we chanted his name was just the representative of part of our demands. Perhaps there will be a box on that page with Mir-hossain Mousavi’s statement about how he accepts the invitation to support people in the fridya prayer protest, because people asked him to participate. They will probably have a foot note explaining that up to then usually movement leaders would announce their appearance somewhere and invite people to show their presence and support, not the other way around.
There will probably be a section on how a movement without a leader and coordinating central structure was so coordinated, and how well the ideas, demands and slogans were brought forth, critiqued, completed and expressed so coherently as if these millions of people had practiced for years. May be right there will be a link to the electronic copy of the history book and a film that will show the momentous Friday prayer protest where establishment’s man with the loudspeaker is shouting “death to America” and us the people are shouting back “death to Russia”! As if we are all one mind and one scream.

Right there will be written that we were the first party which did not have a central committee, a branch, a general secretary and we acted in total anarchy and perfect coordination. There will probably be a little dig about the anarchist organizations of previous decades which had a coordinated structure but acted in total anarchy!

There will be written that we did not have an organizational structure but our political position, demands, our vision and our programs were clear and coherent. That there clearly was a process, in which our demands were clarified, summarized, critiqued and presented in the clearest way.

In this chapter there will be written that we lived the last days of guns and bullets and showed that any place there is consciousness, information and enough space for human connection, bullets are meaningless. There will be a picture of a bullet in our freedom museum somewhere and the subtitle will say: “the last bullet that was fired of a gun.”
And someone somewhere will calculate how much all the electrons of all our websites and weblogs weigh, and compare that to the weight of the bullet and remark, that all in all they weighed less than one thousandth of the weight of the bullet. Perhaps the weight of all the molecules of the slogans we screamed, all the “down with the dictator”, “political prisoners must be freed” and all that chanting that reverberated through the atmosphere, weighed less than a single wall in Evin prison.

Then they will write, we started a new meaning to human society, human connection and globalism and living in a global village. Then these historians will give us a label, the simplest will write: the green revolution. Another will write: the revolution of smiles, and someone will write: the revolution of consciousness.

Source: http://bolts.blogspot.com/2009/08/blog-post.html This blog is in farsi language

Questions & connection to the volunteers of solidarity with the mothers in mourning in Iran:
margebarmostabed@gmail.