Anisha Assadollahi, a language instructor, translator, and labor activist, reported on her tweeter account, Apr. 25, 2023, about the increasing pressure on her husband, Keyvan Mohtadi, an author, teacher, translator, and labor activist who is imprisoned at Evin Prison, which follows:
“Today, Apr. 25th, it is nearly two months that they allow the reception of no medication for Keyvan. 1. In late Feb. 2023, for preposterous excuses they pronounced Keyvan Mehtadi barred from visits and, in practice, he was deprived him from visits for four weeks, including the end-year regular visit. 2. Since late Feb. 2023, they took illegal measures refusing to receive Keyvan Mohtadi’s medications under the pretext of prescription requirement. This is while after the medical prescription was produced, actually from inside the prison, still such measures were at work in early Mar. 3. By the beginning of the new year [in Persian calendar], and Keyvan’s own follow-up from prison, still the situation showed no change, and eventually, today, and despite Mr. Movahhed’s authorization, the chief manager of Evin Prison’s infirmary, for the medications to be provided for him, still they refused to accept the medications, claiming that “Dr. Ebrahimi is against such development;” to that extent antediluvian and high-handed! It seems that they cannot bear someone so full of life even in prison. The tall prison walls on their own cannot appease them sufficiently. They want every dominion of life enchained. And by the sheer fact that you live the resistance in prison, can be rendered costly to them and thus they seek their pity revenge.”
On May. 9, 2022, Keyvan Mohtadi was arrested along with his wife, Anisha Assadollahi and a number of other advocates of teachers and workers’ rights and has been in detention since. After their house was raided by the security forces, the media reported the day after that “charges against these two authors and translators are not clear. In addition, it is not announced as of yet that which security organization is responsible for their arrest and where they are detained.” Now, after nearly a whole year since the date of his arrest, while Keyvan Mohtadi had not been granted even one day of prison break, he is now charged with “collusion and conspiracy against national security” and “propaganda against the regime,” and eventually was sentenced to six years of imprisonment for it. It is worth mentioning that Anisha Assadollah, too, who was formerly arrested and imprisoned as mentioned above, and then temporarily released, got arrested again recently at the house of an imprisoned teacher and teacher rights activist, Mohamamd Habibi, and transferred to Evin Prison on Apr. 28, 2023, along with Reyhaneh Ansarinejhad, Assal Mohammadi, Hirad Pirbodaghi, Sarvenaz Ahmadi, Kamyar Fakour, Hassan Ebrahimi, Zhaleh Rouhzad, and Oldouz Hashemi, all of whom among teachers, labor activists, and children right activists (later, on May 8th, Anisha, Assal, and Hirad were released). After that, Keyvan Mohtadi released his second letter co-authored with Reza Shahabi, the imprisoned labor activist and worker, in celebration of the International Labor Day, May. 1st, their first joint letter was written in Evin Prison for the International Woman Day, whose complete text was translated and republished by IWAC in its last follow-up report on Keyvan Mohtadi; the second letter was published on the Telegram Channel of Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, which is translated below verbatim:
To the Millennials
Ask the mirror
Who your savior is
We, the enraged youth of the previous decades, wanted to talk to you since long ago. Since that time when we could see, here and there, that you are blindfolded and taken away in group, and then we realized that you have made your decision to be more afraid of a bad life than death. Our endeared children and loved ones were among these millennials, and we felt there is a sense of companionship and togetherness between us and them, more than any familiarity. Nevertheless, by seeing the national TV anchors, politicians, and news pundits, looking all pathetic and helpless trying to explicate you into their ready-made molds, we decided to hold it in, longer. We were worried if, after many years of struggling and facing this world, we ourselves would have found similarities to the world that you need to surpass entirely to gain entrance to a new life.
Yet, today is different. Today we actually have something to say to you. Perhaps, besides the rage and hope, today, you also feel a sense of disillusionment, or doubt, or a sort of prudence. They are all human emotions, and their presence is a sign of human properties and rationality at work behind the struggle. The situation will evolve rapidly, unexpectedly, and charged with complexity and contradiction. And, today is the time for asking hard questions. For instance, today, we are worried about how to preserve the concrete accomplishments of the W.L.F Movement? Is our demand limited to a choice of lifestyle or we are to radically transform the discriminative and violent existing structures? How is it possible to turn an individuated struggle into the form of public struggles that are capable of resisting suppression and making themselves heard? And the all too familiar question that we know what we need not, but still it is difficult to articulate what is it exactly that we want?
There is no previously prescribed answer to such questions. Yet, we don’t need to invent the wheel from the outset once more, and regard ourselves a different kettle of fish from the history of the struggles in Iran and the rest of the world. From this regard, this particular day is totally relevant to thinking about the present questions: the International Worker Day, a reminiscent of the struggle over reducing working hours from ten to eight – another formal occasion? But what percentage of our society celebrate this occasion? What percentage feel at home with this occasion, or are they even aware of such an occasion? How is it related to me, if I myself am not a worker?
Don’t rush. This day is more relevant to us that it appears to be, and our alienation against it itself indicative to certain points about threats and opportunities lying ahead. This is not solely confined to the similarities between course of events and out today experience, despite the fact that such similarities are considerable; For instance, nearly 140 years ago, in Chicago, they staged a suspicious bombing in the name of the protestors in order to disperse and distract public protests, and, with this very excuse, not only did shoot at the protestors directly, but also arrested some of their leaders and executed some innocent individuals by charging them for this act; individuals not even present in the bombing scene. Doesn’t it have a familiar ring?
Here we don’t intend repeating those similarities that are shared by ways of resistance and forms of suppression in the course of the history of freedom and equality seeking struggles. In this letter, we want to pose two questions regarding this occasional day. First, what highlights the Worker Day so much so that, besides the International Woman Day, is among very few celebrated on global calendar? And, second, what makes this day contemporaneous to us?
Every year, the first of May, is celebrated worldwide, since the accomplishments of this movement encompasses all generations and countries. Two less labor hours means two more hours for self-education, for developing one’s abilities, for interacting with others. This accomplishment, regardless of gender, nationality, historical and geographical conditions, benefits all laborers. Such demands are not realized through legislation, and this day is for honoring the struggle required and blood spilled over establishing such demands.
The reduction of working hours is quite understandable for any individual with whatever belief or ideology. By establishing this demand, we get more head space. We deserve better labor conditions among which, the reduction of working hours, is one of its manifestations: job and employment security, work environment safety, wage and pension accorded with life expenses, right for participating in the administration of the working environment and the like, and so the first of May is still the field of conflict with a minority invested with wealth and power.
Only to have painted a picture of the sensitivity around this day, we can point out that these days, we are witnessing the arrest of a number of labor activists, and our own present detention, was related to the previous year’s Worker Day (in Persian calendar), so was the case-fabrication and arrest they made against us, dating back to the first of May of 2019. In a sense, the sheer commemoration of this day, has always been the red line not to be crossed for the minority of wealth and power.
Perhaps, today, the demand for reducing working hours seem somewhat trivial, yet, this triviality is an example of being wise after the event. In the US and Europe of the second half of 19 century, same as us today, people were faced with many challenges and demands piled up, and electing one particular demand simply meant abandoning many others. In addition, why should this particular demand have any economic meaning, and not be a social, legal, or political demand? Thus, the formation of that movement was the resultant of a profound grasp of the social conditions of .one’s own time, and decisions, sometimes difficult, for elevating it into a public demand (for instance, demanding land for peasants or the right to public vote were not prioritized?) Our society today has become so complex that it is hard to imagine a comprehensive demand, unified and capable of creating convergence among all social strata and social forces, yet, the model of the eight hour work a day campaign is still constructive. This lasting accomplishment is not only thanks to a limited number of strikes and demonstrations. In fact, over twenty years of persistent activism lies behind it, whose initial form was shaped up by those workers who had fought for abolition in the US Civil War, and had used their organizational skills to the fullest capacity at the service of this campaign.
Despite all this, such movement could not succeed on itself without solidarity of the working class. The last instance is especially important because today, we still need international allies, yet such allies are not found among the states, but those people who have tasted discrimination, injustice, and structural violence themselves. The axiom of any movement is independence, and one cannot be put to bargain over states and powers.
Let’s summarize what we wrote so far, before we bore you: the first of May proved lasting in the global calendar because it was a specific demand with an economic nature, pursued for decades by the majority class, which was organized and had common interests, and then by the support and solidarity of the wage-earning classes all over the world managed to become a lasting accomplishment so much that we, all, today are benefited from it.
***
And, now, the second question: what is the relation of Worker Day to you, the multitude of youth, who mostly neither have any job nor a fixed income, nor do recognize yourselves as “worker?” And why does it matter that we define ourselves in relation with a job we don’t have?
Our common understanding of a worker is someone who, quite similar to Charlie Chaplin in his classic, The New Age, repeats an uneventful and alienating act. For instance, fixing a screw. Yet, the more exact definition of a worker is someone who needs to work or sell his labor force to another, whether in form of manual labor, or in form of a desk-bound clerk, whether in form of a long-term contract, or as a freelancer. From this respect, which of us can survive in this society without working, or even if we do, get to actualize our talents and abilities to have a decent life? This day, in principle, belongs with anyone whose human abilities and activities are taken hostage in society for pure survival.
That stereotypical and obsolete image of worker, besides the myriad of its difficulties and challenges, is often paired with a stable job, the ability to provide the basics of life for oneself and one’s family, and a career-based identity that can be understood in form of the working class’s ideology or ethical order. Our present situation is such that the flowers faded and remained the thorns, the treasure naked by the army of worms. Meaning that, while fully deprived of the benefits and landscape of a relatively stable worker livelihood, we are now more than ever in need of selling our labor force to survive in this society. In that obsolete image, workers used to create the world’s wealth, without benefitting from it themselves. Yet, today, many of us not only are divested from social advantages, but also socially discriminative mechanisms have prevented us from being productive and useful. In such circumstances, our lives are started from the end, many of us see ourselves as the potential dead who should first annihilate their own living forces in order to be able to enter society. A situation resembling that of Forough Farokhzad’s poem:
As if an aged impetus, at war with womb
Tearing it apart to exhume
Alive, but yearning to be born
Dead, but craving to die not to be timeworn
It might be interesting to you that the very word “worker” was prohibited back in 1940’s, meaning that even the very use of this word was criminalized. There were many attempts made to make wage-earners aware of their status as the most important pillar in producing social value, and thus feel proud for being workers. Today, we are need, once more, to revive that sense of self-esteem. From whatever ethnicity, gender, and belief we hold, we are humans and our lively activity is the most important pillar of society, and no one is allowed to prevent us from being benefitted by social advantages, or from playing a constructive role in society. The flourishment of our human and social abilities on society requires an identity based on working and a sense of career-related development and growth.
***
A generational movement only gain its true meaning through a tight interaction with social ruptures and structural differentiations, among which, up to our time, the most neglected one remains a career or social class based collective identity. The truth of the matter is that all major historical developments have been class-natured. In addition to creating a collective identity, struggle in working environment sometimes can achieve lasting effects and accomplishments while avoiding bloody street conflicts. For instance, today’s status of bus-drivers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company Syndicate is incomparable to that of twenty years ago (regarding benefits, wage-rate and its timely payment, social status and the like). Progress and establishment of this status is the result of their consistent collective struggle, and through practicing democracy in working environment in form of a syndicate. A collective union identity can replace cut-throat competition that has torn our society into fragments and arranged us against one another with solidarity.
On the other side, labor and union movements have learnt many lessons from your presence, including the fact that it cannot only be defensively active, and that the foundation of union demands is our downgraded human dignity. These movements have come to prowling in order to answer for job instability and new job relations that, in addition to your generation, it covers a major part of the previous generations as well. This path necessitates a long dialogue and collaborative thinking among generations, unions, minorities, and all those laborers who perhaps one day would form a united class force strong enough to eradicate exploitation, discrimination, and violence. As said a poet, “”the ultimate of all forces is to adhere, adherence.”
Sorry if went voluble, and who knows, perhaps we would celebrate together the next first of May.
By Reza Shahabi and Keyvan Mohtadi
Evin Prison, May 1, 2023
