In Support of Democracy
in Iran
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free to repost or reuse its contents.
We
support the right of the people of Iran to be treated with dignity and
respect, free from oppression, threats and violence, free to assemble
peacefully, and free to choose their leaders in an
open, transparent, fair, democratic electoral process. |
A. General Strike
| Three Types of General Strike
|
How an Iranian Green Flu General Strike Might
Look |
The French General Strike of 1968
B. A Possible
Negotiated Solution Where Neither Side Would Lose Face
A. General Strike
One way to attempt to get a new election in Iran would be to have
a General Strike. (The general strike in France of May
1968 ran for two weeks and nearly caused the collapse of the
government.)
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Three Types of General Strike
There are at least three types of General Strike ranging from least active and least dangerous to violent-confrontational and most dangerous.
1.
In the least active kind of General Strike, the protest is
done by staying home on a workday. People would quietly study, pray,
read, spend time with their families, discuss the state of things
and what to do about it in their homes. People would call their jobs
saying they are sick and not go to work. In Iran this might be
called
The Green Flu.
The effectiveness of the protest could be measured in number of
absences from work, how few people were seen on the streets during
the normal commute time, and the degree to which normal business and
governmental activities were slowed or stopped.
A repressive regime would find it more difficult to find citizens to
beat, arrest, and abuse during the use of this approach. |
2. A more active form of protest involves attempting to hold peaceful
demonstrations, without seeking confrontation. When this succeeds, it
can be very effective because the number of people protesting can be easily
seen by all.
The hard problem is that a repressive regime can beat, arrest, and even murder the protesters, sometimes with impunity, all the while falsely claiming it was the peaceful protesters who were being violent. |
3. An even more confrontational form of General Strike involves large, non-peaceful demonstrations, where the protesters throw rocks at security forces, damage property, and in general offer violence to others. Sometimes the protesters occupy government buildings or other sites or they engage in street battles with the police.
This was effective in France in 1968, but only because the French government was unwilling to ignore civil liberties and
did not brutally, violently suppress the protests. |
Which sort of tactic, if any, may be worth considering in the case of the disputed elections of June 2009 in Iran is perhaps at this moment an open question.
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How an Iranian
Green Flu General Strike Might
Look
Those who want a new election would simply not show up for work. Those
with their own businesses would not open the business.
No demonstrations would be needed. No confrontation, less chance of bloodshed.
Exceptions could be made so that services vital to the people of Iran
would still be available, services such as, drinking water, medical
clinics, power generation, etc.
Services essential to the ruling powers in Iran but not essential to the
people of Iran would not be supported, such as, TV and radio broadcasts of
messages by the current rulers of Iran.
People could quietly stay at home and study, pray, read, spend time with
their families, discuss the state of things in Iran today and what to do
about it.
The Basiji would have no one to abuse, the police no one to warn, the
rulers no one to blame for any provocations caused by the Basiji.
The rulers of Iran would come to realize how much they depend on the good
will of the people of Iran.
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Description
of the More Violent French 1968 General Strike
“May 1968” refers to the period when the strike occurred, and was the
largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced
industrial country, the first wildcat general strike in history, and a
series of student occupation protests.
The prolonged strike involved eleven million workers for two weeks in a
row, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the de
Gaulle government of France...
Many saw the events as an opportunity to shake up the "old
society" and traditional morality, focusing especially on the
education system and employment. It began as a long series of student
strikes that broke out at a number of universities and lycées in Paris,
following confrontations with university administrators and the police.
The de Gaulle administration's attempts to quash those strikes by police
action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with
the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by a general strike by students
and strikes throughout France by eleven million French workers, roughly
two-thirds of the French workforce.
The protests reached such a point that de Gaulle created a military
operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolved the National
Assembly and called for new parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968. The
government was close to collapse at that point (de Gaulle had even taken
temporary refuge at an air force base in Germany)...
May '68... had an enormous social impact. In France, it is considered to
be the watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion,
patriotism, respect for authority) shifted towards a more liberal moral
ideal (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that today better
describes French society, in theory if not in practice. Although this
change did not take place solely in this one month, the term mai 68 is
used to refer to this general shift in principles, especially when
referring to its most idealistic aspects.
This was effective in France in 1968, but only because the French
government was unwilling to ignore civil liberties and
did not brutally, violently suppress the protests.
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B. A
Possible Solution Where Neither Side Would Lose Face
In “New Protest Builds in Iran” (news article, June 17) Abbass Abdi
summarized the Iran election situation, “There is no legal solution...
we need a solution that neither side would lose face.”
One possible, perhaps cynical, solution that may come to be considered
would be to blame the recent obvious election fraud entirely on President
Ahmadinejad.
1. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has already set an investigation of
the election in motion.
2. His investigation may discover widespread irregularities in the vote.
3. Ayatollah Khamenei might express surprise and outrage at the flawed
election process discovered by his investigation.
4. His investigation might show that flawed process was engineered by
President Ahmadinejad.
5. Ayatollah Khamenei might offer new elections to challengers, such as
Mir Hossein Mousavi, in private negotiations about how power would be
shared after the new elections had been carried out.
6. With terms agreed to, new elections could then be held, without much
lasting loss of face on any side.
7. President Ahmadinejad might go into exile in Russia. He would not need
to actually be punished and so his supporters might be less inclined to
oppose such an agreement.
8. The people of Iran would get their much-deserved new election.
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Mahatma Gandhi,
who helped to deliver India from an unjust rule, was once asked what he
thought of Western (European) civilization. He said, “I think it would
be a good idea.”
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