In front of Hecuba, women, men, students and Iranian community members stood and delivered speeches in solidarity with protesters in Iran, rallying together last Wednesday on November 30.
The people marched through campus, stopping at Tommy Trojan. They received many inquisitive stares as participants chanted “Zan Zendegi Azadi!” which means “Woman Life Freedom” in Farsi. Mixing English into the mix, they also chanted “Say Her Name” and “No Iran Regime,” along with “Mahsa Amini. Students from many different Iranian and Persian student organizations on campus also protested despite fears of retaliation.
“[Students are] scared of showing their faces because they don’t want the Iranian government to see. The Islamic Republic can just prohibit them from coming or they can threaten their families,” Chloe Penycae, a graduate student studying global health, said.
One international Iranian undergraduate student, who chose to remain anonymous for the safety of herself and her family in Iran, said her mother, who was born before the regime began, remembers a time of freedom in their country.
The same student then recalled her recent experiences and struggles contacting her family who live in Iran.
“Within the last two weeks, we have [had] no contact with them just because of the internet” she said. The student then says that when phone calls have gone through, oftentimes they have been recorded by the government, who even end her calls mid-sentence at times.
“There has been days where I just could not focus and have to go through my day, just living my life here while also being in constant worry,” she said.
Some protesters held the old flag of Iran, which depicted a lion and sun in the center, changing in 1980 after the current Iranian regime began in 1979.
Protests began in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amani, a 22-year-old Persian woman killed by Iran’s morality police for not wearing clothing in accordance with their laws on September 16, 2022. Since then, there have been daily protests in Iran and movements inside and outside of the country with over 400 dead and 18,000 arrested in over 10 weeks. The most recent and notable protest is the silence by the Iranian national soccer team, who did not sing the national anthem during a match at the 2022 World Cup.
Around 200 universities in the United States and throughout the world rallied in solidarity with the Iranian people. The Iranian Scholars of Liberty organized this movement. It is composed of 76 universities in the US, 22 in Canada, and one in Mexico. Their mission, according to their website, is to “amplify the voice of the people of Iran through our network in the diaspora.”
The Persian community in Los Angeles is one of the largest in the diaspora with over 130,000 living in the region. Following the rally at USC, many rallied at UCLA at 4 p.m. There was also a rally at Cal Poly Pomona.
Many of these rallies are organized through social media. Iranian students at the rally are calling their peers to repost everything they see on their Instagram stories.
“Coverage is what we need. The more coverage you get, the more national the more international news coverage will be,” said the international undergraduate student.
The rally members recommend using hashtags like #womenlifefreedom, #ZanZendegiAzadi and #MahsaAmani. They also encourage students of all backgrounds to write to their elected officials. Another student, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said, “We need the government and we need institutions like USC and other universities, local governments, national government to speak up.”
