Tuesday, June 23, 2009

A Bazaar general strike!

Tweets via persiankiwi:
Mousavi -- We will not expend any more energy talking to the Gov in the streets -- we must change course
Mousavi -- From Today [Tuesday] every morning at 9am WE ALL travel to Tehran Bazaar -- whatever reaction from Gov -- Bazaar will close
Mousavi -- stop all work and travel with friends & family toward Tehran Bazaar every day at 9am
Mousavi -- do NOT wear green -- dress normally -- bring your children -- if stopped u are ONLY going shopping
Mousavi -- the objective is to bring Tehran to standstill -- millions of people go shopping but NOBODY SHOPPING
Mousavi -- There is nothing to fear -- if asked -- YOU ARE ONLY GOING SHOPPING
Mousavi -- no matter what the reaction of the Gov -- the Bazaar will close or be at standstill

Al Giordano: This is quite brilliant on a tactical level. It is a method of contributing to a General Strike without calling it one. It gives the bazaari shopkeepers a pretext to shut down the bazaars -- the backbone of Iranian commerce -- without risking losing their market posts (as the State has threatened). It allows demonstrators a large degree of stealth heading to and from the 'demonstration' without placards or wearing green or anything else to call attention to them as individuals. It focuses the struggle in a highly public place -- one that exists in every city and town -- where if the State chooses violent repression it will provoke even more opposition from previously unmobilized forces.

How does the regime deal with that? It leaves no good choices for those trying to hold on to what is already a shaking grip on their power.

There are unconfirmed reports today that a national strike is underway already, including by Iran state television which has reported that today, Tuesday, thirty percent of workers in the country have not shown up on the job. If state media is admitting 30 percent, it is a safe bet that adherence to the strike is larger than that. It would also be very impressive because the government has warned that any citizen that participates in a strike will be fired from his and her job, or lose his or her space in the public markets...

Their demonstrations and strikes are infused with appeals to that clergy to exercise its influence and change the course of the State. The protests are not aimed at Washington, or at the United Nations, nor at any other external power to intervene (if there's one thing that almost all Iranians agree on it is that they will never again be ruled from abroad)... The demonstrations are, instead, very shrewdly aimed at the internal dynamics inside Iran; the self-actualized protests of a people very well informed as to their indigenous opportunities for self-rule.