OpEdNews - Diary: "DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY" AMERICA 1776, IRAN 2009

From the article below: I also know that Iran's women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I've seen them urging less courageous men on. I've seen them get beaten and return to the fray. "Why are you sitting there?" one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. "Get up! Get up!"

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Women of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains and second-class citizenship!

Iranian women protesting the rigged election in Iran.
(source)

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The Iranian Green Revolution is, at the core, a women's revolution as much as anything else, and you see women out front in the protests everywhere, defying their traditional, subservient roles in the entrenched, suffocating patriarchal system that lingers on in Iran today. In fact the article below states that they are the vanguard of the revolution. Kudos to them.

Here is a picture that says it all, one woman's courage, defiance, even blasphemy while standing before Ahmadinejad, "il Capo" of the Basiji street thugs.

Uppity Iranian woman greeting Ahmadinejad with non-traditional gesture
(source)

Here is an excerpt from this article:

"DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY" AMERICA 1776, IRAN 2009

I also know that Iran's women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I've seen them urging less courageous men on. I've seen them get beaten and return to the fray. "Why are you sitting there?" one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. "Get up! Get up!"
Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "We want liberty!" accompanied her.

As I read Roger Cohen's report, America's own "Daughters of Liberty" come to my mind. I recall the American women who entered "into a resolve for every mother to disown her son, and refuse the caresses of her husband, and for every maiden to reject the addresses of her gallant" if any of them failed to hold fast to the patriotic position. I remember, Hannah Arnett, who in the presence of her husband and local leaders of Elizabeth Town, declared:

For me, I stay with my country, and my hand shall never touch the hand, nor my heart cleave to the heart of him who shame her . . . . Isaac, we have lived together for twenty years . . . But I am the child of God and of my country, and if you do this shameful thing (turn the town over to Cornwallis), I will never again own you for my husband. 1

Looking at the beautiful, blood covered face of "NEDA" whose image has emerged as the symbol of the current Iranian revolution, I think of Hanna Caldwell of Newark. "Neda," is the code name of a young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests, when she was shot from a rooftop of a house. She died on the street within a couple of minutes. Hanna Caldwell, a mother of nine, chose to stay in her home and was shot. She was not alone. "Six widows are burned out; some very aged, and others which were not burnt, were torn to pieces, entirely plundered" reported the New Jersey Gazette on July 12, 1780 following the battle of Springfield. At such tumultuous times, home no longer affords protection. Just listen to the cries heard as a Tehran apartment is invaded in the dead of night.

(for the full article, see: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/93713.html)