Solidarity With The Iranian Struggle For Democracy

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This is a brief essay about solidarity. In this case, it's about solidarity with the people of Iran who are protesting what appears to be a stolen election, the loss of democracy. How do we support those people, half the world away, in their struggle for democracy? How do we say just as people (and not a government) that we support their efforts to demand democracy? That they're right, they deserve their democracy and we want them to have it? We can only do simple things. Things like changing our location and time zone on Twitter to Tehran and GMT +3.5 hours. Things like making our avatar green. Things like reading the posts of those who are there. Things like posting and distributing their videos on youtube. Things like writing blogs and asking others to link arms with them in solidarity. Things like talking about what ideas we might have that could be of help to them. These are things that might be completely ineffective to help Iranians achieve democracy, to get a new, fair election, to overturn the sham outcome of their last election. I realize that. But that's not what's important. That's not what's important now. What's important, I think, is our solidarity with their struggle, our saying, however we can say it, "Brothers and Sisters, we're with you. We want you to succeed. We want you to be safe, and free. We want you to obtain the change you seek." Will they see it? Will they hear about it? Will they know that we are saying this about them? Of course they will. I say it by posting in green. You might have other ways of saying it. It's important to me to say, aloud, to whomever can hear it, "I support the struggle in Iran for democracy." Please join me. Please join me in giving to the Iranian people who are struggling for democracy the same support we'd like to receive in our struggles for democracy and equality and peace. .