Broadcasting
147
us, the only practical way to support is at least once a week we have to hold
some sort of rally or town hall meeting.” Participants traveled on charter buses
from cities such as Dearborn and New York to converge on Washington, DC, for
mass rallies on several occasions, including the weekend following the Friday of
Dignity Massacre in March. Likewise, respondents in Britain organized weekly
protests in London, busing in hundreds of participants from cities such as
Liverpool and Birmingham. They also demonstrated outside the Yemeni embassy
and in front of 10 Downing Street and the US embassy to protest US and Britain’s
financial support of the Saleh regime. Occasionally, Yemeni diaspora events were
coordinated across countries. Mazen O. from the DC area recalled that their
group held demonstrations with Yemenis in Germany on one occasion. Activists
from Britain also used Skype to share their experiences with their US counterparts during a town hall event in Dearborn, Michigan.
Yemeni activists worked proactively to draw media in advance of these
events. Mahmoud of Sheffield attested, “We knew journalists, we had a good
list of journalists from all channels, from the BBC to Al Jazeera to Al-Hiwar.
And we informed them in advance that we are moving and we make our point
clear and publicize it.” After sending press releases to different channels,
respondents such as Safa in London reported garnering BBC, Al Jazeera,
Press TV (an Iranian international satellite channel), and Al-Hiwar coverage
(a London-based satellite channel). Abubakr in London stated that they worked
to gain the sympathy of bystanders as well, recalling that the conversations they
initiated with passersby “felt good” because “it wasn’t just about shouting
Arabic chants. It felt like we were actually doing something” to educate the
public about the cause. Morooj of the DC-based movement also made short
films of their protests and posted the videos on YouTube “to try and get the
word out there.” Ahmed of San Francisco emphasized the importance of this
broadcasting work for their compatriots and in the political arena.
It’s a small thing, but we used to contact people from there, from Change Square in Sanaʻa.
And those small things for them were big. First of all, they see that their families outside
Yemen, they’re supportive of whatever they’re doing there. They know that they’re not
alone in this struggle. Second, the regime used to say that those people who are protesting
there in Yemen, they’re just odd voices there, trying to make the international community
think there is nothing there in Yemen. We wanted to show that, no, it’s not just people who
are there. Even Yemenis who are outside Yemen are protesting. Yemeni people deserve to
live freely just as the American citizens do. There was a lot of aid going to the Yemeni
government which was used to kill the Yemeni people. We wanted that to be stopped, too.
Arwa in London also described the importance of demonstrating their
support to Yemenis back home by sending them videos of their protest events:
“The most way we were connected to the Yemenis there, after we made the
videos of the demos, we made sure that the Yemenis know that we are with
them and that we are making their voices heard.” In these ways, the literal
voicing of revolutionary chants, slogans, and demands in the diaspora diffused
the revolution abroad.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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