Whatever happens next, Iran has already written a new chapter in the history of people power. Every single Iranian woman or man who has broken through a personal barrier of fear to protest peacefully on the streets of Tehran, Isfahan or Shiraz, wearing some strip of green, is making history.
Alone, each individual is powerless. Together, by the sheer power of numbers, they can – if only for a few hours – utterly confound the violent repressive power of the state. Even the brutal thugs of the Basij militia simply cannot beat so many human beings over the head. So long as the green-clad protesters remain non-violent, which the great majority of them do, and so long as they keep coming out in large numbers, Mahatma Gandhi will be applauding from beyond the grave. For they will have learned Gandhi's fundamental lesson about the power of the powerless.
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