3 - On the Streets and Beyond

Summary

This chapter underscores the utility of a “history from below” approach. Crowd action dispels historical marginalization and state propaganda, making women and men—not states or powerful people—the central agents of history making, and allowing a more nuanced understanding of events. Studying the crowd enables the reader to understand the unique opportunity for mobilization presented by Iran’s 2009 presidential election. The disputed election results prompted a week-long uprising that provoked a crackdown by the state. The chapter outlines how one continuous uprising morphed into many, and how Iran’s political calendar was usurped by the uprising for renewed social movement activity, with the crowd co-opting some of the most politically charged days from Iran’s revolutionary past to evade the security climate and protest the state. Friday sermons, the anniversaries of the US embassy seizure and Ayatollah Beheshti’s assassination, and Student Day, along with revolution-era strategies of action, such as the night-time chants of “Allahu akbar,” all became part of the uprising’s repertoire.