Dallas Morning News, Jul 10, 2009 – About 600 people gathered in downtown Dallas today to protest Iran’s recent challenged election and to commemorate the 10th anniversary of an Iranian student uprising.
Iranian flags fluttered and chants of “United Nations, pay more attention” and “Obama, Obama, attention, attention” rang out during the protest, outside the Earle Cabell Federal Building on Commerce Street.
“Most of the time Iranian people are working, but [today] we got enough so that we could show a lot of people downtown what’s going on in Iran” said Reza Alizadeh, one of the rally’s organizers.
Participants carried picket signs and a flag-draped coffin bearing pictures of Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian teenager whose death on the streets of Tehran attracted worldwide attention last month. She was shot, apparently by a member of the Iranian militia, while taking part in a protest over that country’s disputed presidential election. Her death was captured by an amateur videographer, and the gruesome footage was widely circulated on the Internet.
Many of the Dallas marchers wore “They Killed Neda” T-shirts.
“This movement was crying out for some sort of symbol, and the way she was killed represented the evils of the current regime,” said Mo Mohtadi, one of the Dallas marchers.
Mohtadi said women are at the forefront of the huge demonstrations taking place in Iran. “They are leaders because they have been suppressed so long. You must remember that 2,500 years ago, Iranian women were running countries, and now they have been singled out as insignificant.”
Most of the marchers were of Iranian descent, but a handful were not.
Constanza Garcia, who was born in South America, said she attended because she hadn’t been as supportive during Iran’s pro-freedom student uprising in July 1999.
“We can’t stand by and let the government keep killing innocent people,” she said.
Pat Bellow said she attended because her niece and nephew are half-Iranian.
“I make sure they are aware of the situation so that one day when they are older they can go there without all this crazy stuff happening,” she said.