What’s in a Sticker

I agree with you about the Obama Affect. It’s almost impossible not to draw parallels here between Obama’s campaign for change and what is happening in Iran. In the first place, it’s the young voters in Iran who are demanding change and Obama reached young voters here in record numbers. It seems that young people everywhere are fairly desperate to move forward into the 21st century and shed the old viewpoints and the old ways of doing things. Shedding your skin isn’t an easy process – it’s a struggle.

I think that it is a bit hypocritical for the United States to take any credit for the “change momentum” sweeping across other countries, for instance with the so-called Twitter movement that is happening in Iran. And I am saying this because this kind of spontaneous response to perceived injustices does not happen in the United States at this moment in time (the 60s and 70s appear a distant image). During the anti-Iraq war movement a few years ago, permits were needed for any kind of rallying, organizations were the engines to the mass mobilization (one may recall Ashcroft warning all who reside in the U.S. that HE is watching). And of course the actual instance where a real comparison could be made is the 2000 presidential election–the people did nothing like a spontaneous protest–they simply waited anxiously for the Supreme Court decision. This is not to say there was not anger, frustration and spontaneous instances of rebellion. But a far, far, far cry from what we see in Iran. I am not so sure if people reacted in the same way in the United States, some of the same aggressive tactics of surveillance and suppression would not have been practiced. Even the rather innocuous Olympic flame protest was circumvented to avoid any real confrontation.
A last point specifically to this image and the bagnewnotes commentary: If Obama had been cheated out of a victory because of perceived fraud. I could not imagine this same type of mass rallying against a McCain victory. Any possible Twitter Movement would have quickly fizzle.

Right. I thought at first it was a window into a gas chamber. I didn’t notice the CHANGE bumper sticker until I had gone back and looked at it.
OK, the cutline says it was the scene of a police raid. With the kind of violence it took to knock that panel out of the door, I can guess there was some more damage to the people they arrested.
If they do get change I hope it is more genuine than the one we got in this last election. .

Chris Hedges has eloquently elaborated my thoughts above: In Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/22-0