In Solidarity with the Tehran Bus Drivers

It's easy to be misled when the powers of the media or State propaganda play on the differences of people. The media, making a nice little profit to boot in increased sales, has taken the Muslim outrage with cartoonists as example of conflict of the "West" and "Muslims." The following news story reminds us what values we share with Muslims who are fighting for democratic values and at terrible price.

As Nick Cohen wrote in the Observer, the cartoon controversy "was manufactured by hard-line Danish imams who hawked the cartoons round the Muslim world for four months (and, somewhat blasphemously, added obscene drawings of their own). The religious right and Syrian Baathists welcomed them and proved yet again that they need to incite frenzies to legitimise arbitrary power."

Contrast this with the story of the Tehran bus drivers, forming their own unions against almost insurmountable odds.  The union officers were arrested and beat up.  Still, the majority refused to renounce their strike. That's when the state went after their wives and children. Cohen continues, "It cannot be said often enough that this is not a clash of civilisations but a civil war within the Islamic world between theocratic reaction and the beleaguered forces of liberty and modernity. The best service the rich world's liberal left can render is to get on the right side for once."

Let's search, be ever vigilante for those courageous acts of people under great adversity who try for freedom of speech, assembly and expression as they strive to collectively represent themselves through a union. They need to be supported so that they know that they're not alone. A general negative expression of "clash of cultures" accomplishes little, except to create an "us" versus "them" attitude. This is our chance for solidarity and identification with these same values of liberty and democracy. If this story isn't told, an opportunity slides away under the headlines of divisiveness and hate.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/...