Breakdown of Conflict Transmission 135 “Yemeni American” way. He lamented that “They want to control things. They want to be on top, in power. They want to have their names published in articles. And [lead in] the protest. For example, we did protests here. A lot of people, especially from Michigan – everyone wants to deliver a speech.” Because trust and solidarity were tenuous within the movement, many organizers paradoxically sought to support the revolution while distancing themselves from “politics.” For this reason, respondents used broad rhetorical strategies to avoid accusations of being proxies for any particular political party or elite “agenda.” When Safa joined the first youth meeting of activists in London, she found that the group was being extremely careful of who they included and were intentionally vague in their anti-regime claims and slogans. She recalled, Not all of them wanted to have a political framework, which seemed odd to me. They just wanted to basically say that they’re not happy with tyranny in Yemen anymore and they wanted to see radical change. The odd thing was that they wanted to see regime change, but I didn’t feel that there was anything else [to their demands]. As an older person, who comes with experience, I needed to feel that I was with people who had a common vision. I think they misunderstood me by thinking, “Oh, she wants us to get political. She wants to direct us into this political minefield.” Eventually, Safa warmed up to this way of thinking because Ibrahim convinced her that having more specific political claims would “open a can of worms.” Summer from New York also attested that she had to keep her discussions general in order to avoid appearing political and rousing North-versus-South sentiments. “I just talk[ed] about just the general,” she said. “We want to kick Saleh out because we want a better life, we want education. So it was just a general type of talk.” In sum, the Yemeni movements that emerged in the United States and Britain in 2011 were primarily led by youth activists who had previously been involved in diaspora empowerment initiatives. After the Friday of Dignity Massacre, organizers attested that revolution sympathizers and some Saleh supporters came to side with the revolution and join their protests. Many who had mobilized on behalf of abuses in Yemen’s southern region also joined in and acquiesced to the requests of organizers not to raise the South Yemen independence flag or secessionist slogans. However, after many southerners in Yemen came to feel betrayed and withdrew their support from the national revolution, so too did secession-supporting activists in the diaspora. Independent youth activists also observed attempts by elites to co-opt the diaspora movement, just as had happened in Sanaʻa. In response, organizers attempted to keep their calls for change “general” and their movements informal so as to be inclusive. Even so, as the Yemeni Spring turned into summer, pro-revolution movements in the diaspora experienced a heightened degree of conflict transmission that proved taxing to their efforts over time. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press