[002] Tehran and the Twin Cities
Could it happen here? What if it already is?
2,000 dead in Iran*.
Murdered by their government during the largest uprising the country has seen since 1980. My father first set foot on U.S. soil just a couple of years before that. His younger brother stayed behind. Amoo, they say in Farsi. Uncle. He still lives there today.
No Internet. No contact. Just the news. What little leaks out after communications get shut down.
In Iran, the movement is led by young people. That gives me a strange kind of comfort. I doubt my uncle, now in his late fifties or early sixties, is marching in the streets.
But Renee Nicole Good wasn’t marching either. Not that day. Not on the way back from dropping off her child at school.
“It’s alright, dude,” she told ICE officer Jonathan Ross. “I’m not mad at you.
Thirty seconds later, Renee Nicole Good was dead. Her blood stained an airbag that never had a chance to save her life.
“Fucking bitch,” Ross said, either oblivious or apathetic to the bodycam recording it all.
Elections have consequences.
Iran doesn’t really have elections.
Not like we do.
A family member messages me.
“Please use your ability to write effective pen to spread the word, they are killing people.”
Helvetica strips away the musical undertones that normally accent the edges of her sentences. What’s left is a good woman who is worried about her friends and family.
But what words exist that can adequately describe the feeling of knowing your heritage runs through two different countries where protesters are being executed in the streets?
Two regimes. Two religions.
One playbook.
After the revolution, the Ayatollah purged Western culture from Iran. Today, MAGA Republicans crusade against “woke culture,” a phrase they often repeat but never define.
Different slogans. Same instinct.
Conquer.
Assimilate.
Burn.
2,000 dead in Iran.
One person killed in Minnesota last week.
Four other protesters killed by ICE since June. Seven more injured.
Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025 alone.
Humans didn’t reach the top of the food chain because we’re strong. We made it because we learned how to think together and protect each other.
Hatred always reaches for violence. It’s the tool of the oppressor, even though it runs counter to our natural evolution…and even our survival as a species.
The good news, at least for Americans, is that five deaths is not two thousand.
The bad news is that the distance between zero and five is a lot wider than the distance between six and ten. Violence tends to foment violence, which is of course exactly what both of these regimes want.
I wish I had better news for the people of Iran, for the protesters being massacred by a regime that has had forty-five years of practice oppressing its people.
May we never fall that far here in the United States of America.
Even though it kinda looks like we might.
-S
*Given how hard it is to get accurate news reporting out of Iran, there is some dispute as to the actual numbers. I’ve seen reputable outlets reporting 2,000 and other just-as-reputable outlets reporting 12,000. An Iranian official has admitted that the toll is at least 3k. I wrote the original draft of this when the headlines cited 2,000, so that’s the figure I stuck with for the final copy.