Social Movements in Iran Lessons for Activism
when
our narratives of others become
polarized
they often obscure more than they reveal
it’s no secret that we live in a time of
increasing political tension
and political polarization whether
that’s
in our domestic politics across the
lines of
political ideology or in international
relations
across borders and different political
systems
our narratives of others in this context
have
become increasingly broad and reductive
inside and outside us and them
our values and vision for the future and
theirs
imagine asking da vinci to paint the
mona lisa
using only a paint roller and yet this
is how we approach
constructing our narratives of others
particularly those who appear
most different from ourselves i want to
suggest
today that one way we can push back
against this narrative polarization
is to shift our gaze from the level of
governments to the level of the people
and society how are ordinary people
engaging in activism to try to transform
their world
in my own research i study iranian
politics
i look at narratives of iran from the
outside
when i talk to my students about this
and i ask them what narratives do you
have about
iran they often tell me stories about
iran as a threat
or iran as hostile and antagonistic
iran is a part of the axis of evil
and so on this negative perception is
also reflected
in polling data gallup for example
polls americans and asks them to give
their favorability rating
of select numbers of countries iran
being one of them
and consistently since the late 1980s
until today
about four in five americans respond
that they have an unfavorable
view of iran this is puzzling to me not
only as someone who studies iran but
as someone who has a personal connection
to this culture
i’m iranian-american my father
immigrated to the united states in the
1970s
my mother is an american born in the
united states
and so i grew up between these two
cultures the united states and iran and
the narratives i
saw in the media and later in the
academic and policy
literatures about iran stood starkly at
odds
with my own experiences with iranian
people
and i began to wonder what could be
gained
if we put away the paint roller and took
out
a more nuanced brush so to speak to
our understanding of iran i want to tell
you about three social movements in iran
movements for environmental protection
for gender equality and for economic
justice
which all demonstrate that iranians like
americans
and indeed like the international
community are facing many of the same
challenges
and have very similar aspirations for
what they
would like a future society to look like
before i move on to tell you about these
three movements i want to
share with you a personal story that
got me thinking about the differences
in government narratives versus the
narratives of people so
imagine the scene it’s a hot
summer afternoon in june 2013.
i’m in tehran the capital of iran
and i’m heading to a restaurant
my relatives assure me that i have to
try this specific
dish called calapache which means
head and feet they say this dish is
going to help cure my jet lag and give
me a lot of energy
the dish is made from boiled
sheep’s head eyes and tongue and brain
included and boiled sheep’s feet and
then some combination of vegetables
as someone who’s not a particularly
adventurous eater
i thought this was going to be the most
interesting thing to happen to me
on that day we went to the restaurant
and i remember the front facade of the
building was
floor to ceiling glass so you could see
right out onto the street
it was a narrow restaurant with a long
counter
behind which there was many boiling pots
emitting a lot of steam and all kinds of
aromas
that were unfamiliar to me so my cousin
and
family friend and i sat down and we had
our meal and i actually really enjoyed
this new dish as we finished up our meal
i looked out the front of the store the
front of the restaurant and noticed more
and more people filling the street
far more people than should have been
there on a typical saturday afternoon
then i
glanced up to the television in the
corner of the room
and saw a government official standing
behind a podium
and we realized he was announcing the
election results
the presidential election had just taken
place the day prior
and the results were in the more
moderate
candidate favored by reformists
in iranian society named hassan rouhani
had just narrowly crossed the 50 percent
threshold he needed to win the election
outright
and prevent a runoff in fact he had 50.7
percent of the popular vote and what we
were observing in the street was
people coming out spontaneously to
demonstrate and
celebrate this election result
it was not only a partisan victory
but a collective exhale
in a sense the country was pivoting
from a more inward looking world view
and a more hostile relationship with the
outside world
under the previous president more
conservative
mahmoud ahmadinejad and there was a lot
of hope
that the country was changing and would
develop
a more normal relationship with the
outside world
we joined the crowd and i saw things
that i’ll never forget that day
i saw cab drivers standing outside of
their cars
stuck in a large crowd of people they
couldn’t move
honking the horns not out of frustration
but out of joy
to be part of that scene shopkeepers
coming out of their stores
offering trays of tea and other sweets
and goodies
to the crowd and listening to the people
chanting
about change and about their hopes for
the future
i thought where have i seen such a crowd
before
and what came to mind was 2008 in the
united states
after the presidential election of
president obama
we saw similar crowds i was a college
student at that time and i remember
in the city where i was located a
similar
spontaneous demonstration in response to
the election result
so what i learned was if we can shift
our level of analysis
from governments and official government
narrative
and instead look at what’s going on
among
everyday people what’s going on at the
level of society
what i saw on the street in june in
tehran that day
in 2013 how much more could we gain
in terms of the sophistication of our
understanding of others
i want to shift now and tell you about
three social movements
that emerged during uh rouhani’s
presidency
which is now currently coming to an end
in its final year
there’ll be another election in iran in
summer 2021 but that’s the story for a
different day
the three movements i want to talk about
all challenge
our existing narratives of iran and all
provide
lessons for our own activism here in the
united states
and elsewhere the first movement i want
to speak with you about
is the environmental movement and in
particular i want to tell you about a
group
called nature cleaners this group
started as a result of a facebook post
a man named qazim najaryun who’s
affectionately known as
uncle qasem took a trip to a lake
in northern iran in 2012 and was so
appalled by the trash and debris
and litter that he saw in this natural
setting
he made a facebook post about it
decrying
the environmental degradation that he
observed
the post as i said quickly went viral
and
people began to say let’s do something
to address this let’s not wait for
government to respond
let’s take matters into our own hands
and so the group
nature cleaners was formed and here you
can see
an image from one of their clean up
actions
you can see people of all ages all
genders participating in the group
which is very inclusive and essentially
what they do is
go out to some public space in a day or
in an afternoon
and clean up the litter you can see
their slogan in that image
less litter live better i found this
such an interesting case and something
that’s so under
uh outside of iran showing us the shared
challenge
to protect the environment just like we
have movements for environmental
protection here in the united states
so too is this happening in iranian
society
folks who have been interviewed with
nature cleaners report that their
activism makes them feel
more trust and makes them feel greater
a greater sense of self-efficacy that
their action
matters and that they’re working to
produce meaningful change in their
society
so i think looking at iran in this new
way we learn an important lesson
and that is that small actions matter
and it’s important for us to take direct
action in response to a challenge we
perceive
the second movement in iran i want to
speak with you about is
the movement for women’s rights this
movement has a very long tradition in
iranian history
from the pre-revolutionary period indeed
in the revolution itself
in which women participated in large
numbers
and in the post-revolutionary era as
well
by the 1990s women were actively
participating in the labor force in iran
by the early 2000s women outnumbered men
in institutions of higher education and
women have consistently sought
elected office at local and national
levels
in all branches of iran’s government
it’s true that many of their candidacies
have been blocked
by a body called the guardian council
one of which functions is to vet
candidates for elected office
but this has not deterred women from
engaging in political action if
institutional channels have been closed
they’ve shifted
to social action outside of
the institutions of government one
example i want to share with you today
is a movement called the white
wednesdays campaign
this was started in 2017 by an iranian
journalist
an activist named masih alinajad the
white wednesdays campaign
encourages women to wear
white clothing particularly whitehead
scarves on wednesdays
to demonstrate their opposition to
mandatory islamic
veiling in public which has been a law
in iran since the revolution
so as you can see in this image women
are wearing white clothing
sharing those images on social media
to raise awareness about
this call for reform in the direction of
greater
gender equality so what the white
wednesday’s campaign shows us
is that we must be persistent
in our social activism and if one avenue
is blocked
we need to pursue others that are
available
in the next slide you can see this is a
picture of women
attending a an iranian men’s
soccer match from october 2019
this is the first time that they were
able to attend
a men’s sporting event in over 40 years
since the islamic revolution and through
the campaigns of white wednesdays and my
stealthy freedom
this issue of gender equality has um
risen
more in the national consciousness and
has in fact already started to produce
change so now women can attend men’s
sporting events
and are more visible in public life in
that way
the third and final movement i want to
share with you today and again
all of these challenge are simplistic
broad narratives
of iran from the outside that third
movement is the movement for economic
justice
this really got off the ground in late
2017
and persists all the way into 2020
iranians were responding to increasing
economic hardships
particularly high inflation
which as of september 2020 inflation in
iran is now at historic highs
also high unemployment particularly
youth unemployment
and perceptions of government corruption
in this first image from june 2018
you see protesters gathered outside of
the national bank of iran demanding
reform
and demanding greater accountability
from government
and from financial institutions for the
economic hardship
experienced by everyday people these pro
these protests
accelerated in late 2019 in response to
a three-fold increase
in fuel prices which raised the price of
many basic commodity items
you can see here another image of
protesters
blocking a busy street and then being
dispersed
by riot police using tear gas
this movement for economic justice in
particular
i think really reveals the shared
struggles
that iranians like americans and indeed
like
many in the international community are
facing to create
economic systems with more equity and
more opportunity
for working class people the lesson from
this case i think is to demand
accountability from government officials
it’s not enough only for our social
action to be oriented toward
consciousness raising but also it has to
speak to those in positions of power
and those who can affect meaningful
political change
all three of these movements complicate
and unsettle
the overly simplified narratives
we might have of iran from the outside
as i conclude i want to encourage you to
think back to the
2013 post-election scene
that i described to you that i got swept
up in
on that hot afternoon in tehran in june
this case alongside the description of
the three social movements i’ve given
all encourage us to shift our narratives
our narrative of others from the level
of governments
to the level of the people in doing this
we challenge the overly simplistic
reductive narratives of
others and i argue that if we see others
more fully more complexly in the
fullness of their struggles
we become more aware of both our shared
aspirations for change whether that be
concerning sustainability in the
environment
political rights and gender equality or
economic justice and we also
stand to learn something more about
ourselves
and lessons for our own activism along
the way
thank you
you