WMC Live with Robin Morgan: Bulletin on Women's Revolution in Iran

This is a Special Alert Bulletin from Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan. A women's revolution is exploding nationwide in Iran, unprecedented in Muslim majority countries. The cause was the death of a 22 year old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died last week after being held by the "morality police" for an untold violation of the country's harsh strictures on women's dress.

By Tuesday, protests had raced across the country in bursts of anger, grief, and defiance by women who burned their head scarves, cut their hair, and chanted Death to the Dictator. The ferocity of the protests is due to outrage over evidence that Mahsa was brutally beaten in custody before she collapsed and fell into a coma, and dictates of Iran's government led by ultra conservative President Ebrahim Raisi, who has strictly enforced dress codes and has empowered the hated morality police at a time of widespread economic suffering, and the anguish of the Amini family, who are ethnic Kurds from a rural area of Iran.

In August, a woman was thrown from a speeding vehicle by the morality police. At least 30 people have been killed in demonstrations so far. Authorities have responded by cutting Internet service and resorting to the use of deadly force. But before the Internet was shut down videos got out and could be seen from Amol in the north, Nowshahr in the west, Kerman in the southeast,in the Shiite holy cities of Mashad and Qom, and across Teheran.

International news commentators and anchors reporting on the uprising say they have never seen anything like this in the Muslim world.The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on senior officials from Iran's intelligence and law enforcement branches, condemning the murder. But that is nowhere near enough. We call on women everywhere to act in solidarity with Iranian women and their revolution and to use whatever social media you frequent —Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and others to get this story out. We must each of us exert heavy pressure on our own governments to in turn stop Iran's government from its murderous practices.

Iranian women need to know that we are with them. Our bodies belong to us, to bear children or not as we CHOOSE, to dress as we CHOOSE, to live as we CHOOSE. Iranian women--our sisters--are trapped inside their country with no voice to the world. In the name of Mahsa Amini, give them that voice.

SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL! MAHSA AMINI! WOMEN'S REVOLUTION!

Listen to the audio of this bulletin here.