#Occupy Teach-In on 20 June, International Day in Support of Political Prisoners in Iran: What is the Relation of the 99% Movement to the Political and Human Rights Crisis in Iran?

Ahmad Fatemi, Director of Mission Free Iran, will lead a teach-in on the relationship between the Occupy Movement and political imprisonment in Iran on 20 June at 12:00pm on the 1st Ave side of Dag Hammarskjold Park (opposite the UN headquarters), New York City (Dag Hammarskjold Park, 833 1st Avenue, New York).

Iranian peoples’ struggle is in many ways similar to the struggle of the 99% Movement: women demand equality, workers demand their rights and fair compensation for their work, students demand the right to learn free from repression, people in the LGBT community demand the right to be who they are – and everyone burns for freedom. As a result, you see both in Iran and in other 99% Movements worldwide, women, students, LGBT, and workers on the front lines of this struggle. By its nature, the 99% Movement could not and did not become a “national” phenomenon – it is global.

A key difference between peoples’ struggle in the US compared to Iran is that in the US, when the 99% threatens the society’s existing power relations, and directly points at and challenges the power itself, represented and embodied by Wall Street, people are pepper-sprayed, beaten, shot at with tear gas canisters, thrown in jail, or sent to the Bellevue psych ward against their will. In Iran, protesters are also gunned down in the street, hunted, arrested, thrown in jail, raped, tortured, detained indefinitely as political prisoners, and executed. More than 600 people were executed in Iran last year alone. So far this year alone, more than 225 people have been executed in Iran.

In this teach-in, Ahmad Fatemi will explain the nature of political imprisonment and execution in Iran, why the Islamic Republic regime needs to resort to these measures, the implicit and explicit connection between the 99% in Iran and in the rest of the world, and how the movements can connect to and support each other to fight their common battle on all levels, winning rights and liberties in social, political and cultural arenas as well as in the economic sphere. Every advancing step of the 99% in these areas means the retreat of “Wall Street,” i.e., capitalism.

Ahmad Fatemi, Director of Mission Free Iran, is a former member of the Fedaeyin Guerilla Organization (supporters of M. Ahmadzadeh, Theory of Armed Struggle Strategy and Tactic). He served as military commander of the organization in Kurdistan, which struggled against the Islamic regime’s counterrevolution of the 1979 popular revolution in Iran. As a member of Komala (the Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran), he served as the head of the Central Committee’s military commission. He also was a member of the production team of Radio Komala, and co-wrote for “Pishro,” a publication of Komala’s Central Committee. Mr. Fatemi is currently a special pedagogical assistant in Sweden.

For more information, please contact Maria Rohaly: 240.595.2633; maria.rohaly@gmail.com
List of events for 20 June: https://missionfreeiran.org/2012/04/25/20june2012-stand-with-political-prisoners/