Our Revolution

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The unfolding Iranian election upheaval is a testament to the power that our generation is gathering in the world, a clarion call to YPs everywhere to give any assistance possible.
 
The demographics of Iran, where the median age of the population is roughly 26 years, are making evident the impact that smart young people can have on national and international institutions and paradigms. The tech-savvy youth of Iran has been able to defy all attempts by the current regime to silence protestors, using online outlets such as Twitter and Flickr to maintain a current stream of information flowing to the world at large.
 
What we see on this end, watching the two most trusted twitter streams #iranelection and #gr88, as well as a deluge of images pouring into Flickr and Youtube, is raw democracy at work. Members of mass demonstrations in Tehran breathlessly relaying information to the rest of us, free of any editorial interference. Rumors and updates shift by the minute on these sites where other young users from around the globe, their avatars tinted green to show support for the revolution, are not merely passive observers but actively participate in the struggle.
 
Changing their location and timezone info to match Tehran, an effort which helps to hide real Iranians from the attempts of the regime to stem the rising tide of free information. Those with more technical knowledge are setting up proxy servers to mask message origins, or are responding to frequent calls for distributed denial of service attacks, which have managed to paralyze the great majority of pro-regime Web sites.
 
In short, what is taking place is a direct and organic link between the youth of the world -- there is no official structure to it, and in fact governments are helplessly sidelined. I have personally placed several calls to the offices of my Congresswoman, inquiring what either she or Congress plans to do about the injustices being suffered, or whether she is planning to organize any formal protest or show of solidarity for the protesters. Both times her staff have asked for my address. By the time her platitude-filled boilerplate form letter reaches my P.O. Box, the dust in Tehran will have been long settled, a peak of 200,000 updates per hour to #iranelection will make sure of that.
 
The old channels of outreach are being rendered entirely obsolete, what is replacing them at this moment is a direct human interface, free of any of the old defining structures. Merely young people working in unison to ensure that their shared future is freer and brighter. As I type this, the newest buzz on #Iranelection is that Mousavi has asked the people of the world to wear green this Sunday as a show of support, I hope to see you there with us ...
 
links:
 
http://cssnd.com/content/category/1/1/31/lang,english/
 
http://reunifygally.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/help-iran/
 
http://iran.sharearchy.com/
 
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElection
 
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23gr88