Tamara Lynch

I watched “For Neda” today, which I knew was going to depress and anger me, I knew it, but I had to watch it.  How couldn’t I have?  I felt like I needed to give some homage to her story.  It’s only been a year later.

Of course the first thing you see is the image of Neda lying in the street with blood on her chest, her dark eyes trained on the camera as the light seeped out of them.  It was my mother all over again.

Neda’s killer was caught on tape, but never prosecuted.  My mother’s killer was tried and not convicted.

The similarities were too real for me today.

The pictures of Neda dancing and singing, wearing a blue sleeveless blouse and her hair in a ponytail, were sobering.  Anyone unaware of what they were watching could have mistaken her for a free American girl.  But that video was taken in her home, the only place she would have been allowed to show her skin and hair.  It pained me to think that I am able to dress that way and think nothing of it, while Iranian women are killed for it.

But freedom isn’t free, right?  Our country went through this; Salem witch hunts, the suffragists, the civil war, Catholicism (lol).   I pray, truly pray, that a quite surge of power in the women of Iran is building and eventually explodes in my lifetime.

Unfortunately, I was wiping away tears when I turned the channel and encountered….Snooki.  How does one go from Neda and the Green Movement of Iran, to an overly tan smurf with a bouffant and a bad accent?  It was like whiplash.  Actually I’d rather have whiplash than deal with Snooki.

Come to think of it, we should send Snooki to Iran.  I envision her leading the protest in a green bustier while fist pumping.  Ahmadinejad’s head would spontaneously combust and all would be well.

Wishful thinking.