Act II in Iran's Five-Act Play: The Self-Organization Stage

By Al Giordano

The other day I referred to the past two weeks in Iran as "the first act of a five act play."

As with the betrayed Iranian revolution of 1978-79 that toppled Shah Reza Pahlavi, there are going to be ebbs and flows to the unfolding drama - including periods of media blackout that are just as much a consequence of Western media's fickle hunt for shiny baubles and celebrity deaths (The Field remains a banality-free-zone) as they are fortified by the wave of state censorship and repression in Iran - but have no doubt, kind readers, that rebellion is finding its way.

The video above is badly titled with the words "Tehran youth helping riot police."

Au Contraire!

Those few Iranian youths (three, at first) that put their bodies and lives on the line, evidently encouraging their fellow protesters not to fall into the trap of street-fighting with the cops, were not helping the riot police. They were disrupting the script upon which state repression relies.

The period of "riot porn" in the Iranian struggle has played itself out. And those three youngsters, and those that followed their leadership, took the initiative toward a smarter path toward victory.

As the state arrests and disappears leaders, bloggers, journalists, and as it metaphorically castrates the "official" opposition leadership (Mousavi), and as it engages in power struggle up above (with Rafsanjani, et al), a vacuum is created for new leadership to arise from below. Those three kids - if they are emblematic of the evolution of the struggle throughout the land (and I suspect, based on my long study of social movements, that they do) - are showing a new and improved way to fight. That their fellow protesters went along with their ad hoc leadership is a very encouraging sign.

Again: this is going to take months to play out. But have no doubt. What is emerging is what might be called a "starfish model" of organizing. You know what a starfish is, right? Cut off one or more of its extremities and its cellular structure is set up to grow it back.

In social movements, all that is required is a critical mass of organizers that understand that principle, and they become effectively resistant to the axes and guns of the state.

We are now entering Act II: The Self-Organization Stage.

I've always liked this phase much better than the initial explosion. It's the part of the movie in which a movement grows up and readies itself to prioritize winning over megaphoning. The solution to the grave problems, violence and repression they face today are not to be found in creating copy for the profit-driven media, but, rather, in self-organization: Unity. Planning. Discipline. Every movement that has ever succeeded with a lasting impact has prioritized those principles over doing what the media wants them to do.