This is a caption.Mehrak Kamali.

Cash protest against the March 8 gathering in front of the Ministry of Labor.

Winter of 2017 in Iran was a season of experimenting with new methods of protesting against the current state of affairs, alongside traditional methods. The street movement of the Revolution Girls and the December protests in ninety cities across the country were largely based on decentralized and non-hierarchical methods, utilizing social media and virtual networks. The Revolution Girls would demonstrate individually and silently, while protesters in different cities would spontaneously gather and stand together. In contrast, the protests of the Dervishes, workers, and International Women’s Day on March 8th followed a more traditional pattern of organizing and protesting, based on previous experiences of activism spanning several decades. Although the older or newer methods did not determine the content of the movement, the more radical the movement became, the less risk there was for the newer decentralized individual method; a method that posed less danger for the Revolution Girls, who would silently and symbolically protest while wearing the necessary and obligatory hijab, compared to the Gonabadi Dervishes who only

I have seen almost all the roundtables, conversations, and interviews after the discovery of the girls’ hijab on Enghelab Street and have read the related writings. Most of the conversations and roundtables have two common aspects: referring to the historical background of the movement and clearing the traces of social media networks and separate campaigns, including quiet freedoms and White Wednesdays. Among them, I have seen fewer people mention the new horizons of struggles and new forms of protest proposed by the girls of Enghelab Street. The only exception among them is a very good article by Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani titled “The Girls of Enghelab Street and the New Generation of Social Activists” which refers to their “directness” (being self-sufficient and not dependent on others), “self-centered” and “self-displaying” and “performative” movements. When we turn to reality with the keys that Ahmadi Khorasani gives

In meetings, interviews, and discussions about the girls of Enghelab Street, there is always someone who remembers Tahereh Qarai Al-Ayn and someone else who talks about the protests of March 8, 1357. Everyone believes that we must search for the roots and connect the details in order to achieve a proud continuity of struggles. This search for roots can sometimes be so long that immediate actions connected to the present time are ignored: the heroic face of life and struggles of Qarai Al-Ayn leaves no room to mention Masih Ali Nejad and Shaparak Shajarizadeh. The innocence and idealism of the participants in the 1357 March 8 protests cannot be equated with the individual and performative movements of Vida Mohaved and her followers. We see that here, the name of Qarai Al-Ayn and the memory of the women of March 8, 1357, is used to downplay the current

Defenders say that after the revolution, International Women’s Day has never been canceled. They are correct, and I myself am a witness to this claim. In the past 40 years, gatherings have been held in homes and private places to celebrate Women’s Day. The change in social conditions, and especially the protests in December and the demonstrations of workers and the uprising of Sufis, gave confidence to activists to call for gatherings. But undoubtedly, what gave the organizers the courage to go beyond self-confidence was the possibility of inviting the street girls of the Revolution to protest against compulsory hijab. The street girls of the Revolution were the ones who revived and brought women’s consciousness to the forefront. Every call for a gathering counts on group participation, and it was the street girls of the Revolution who turned courage into the currency of the day and added to the number of those who risked their lives to attend this year’s gathering at the Ministry of Labor. However, the call did not mention the

At the time when the girls of Enghelab Street had created new forms of individual, decentralized, and unpredictable street performances, the return to the traditional and street organization of March 8, 1357 in the gathering of the Ministry of Labor was a step backwards. In terms of content, the women’s movement against compulsory hijab was more political and radical than the movement towards the economic demands of working women. The economic and legal demands of working women not only do not conflict with the dominant power, but today, and in fact in the direction of dimming more radical demands, the removal of hijab, which is a symbol of the religious and anti-women laws of the Islamic Republic, can be simultaneously approved by Khamenei, Rouhani, Khatami, Ahmadinejad, and Sadegh Larijani. It is at this point that these demands become radical, conflicting with the religious foundations of the regime’s leaders, such as “the right of

Some phenomena are turning points; they certainly have roots in the past, but other phenomena must be seen and evaluated with a new logic that they have created and in a new space that they have created. The phenomenon of the girls of Enghelab Street is of this kind. Its roots can be traced back to Qareh Al-Ayn, but what is common among them is their untimeliness, audacity, and innovation that have made both Qareh Al-Ayn and Vida Mohaddes. The girls of Enghelab Street have renewed the rules; with them, a peaceful, naked protest has been born, which under its shadow, old ways of movement must be redefined.