112 Coming Out and Coming Together Washington, DC. She recalled, “After that day, we really began to start working with other cities and start connecting our actions together and [planned] a national day of action in solidarity with Yemenis. So that day definitely was a big turning point. [I]t brought the movement home [to us].” Nadia reported that this event motivated her to galvanize other women in Birmingham to participate in the London-based protests. The women weren’t involved as much in the organizing for the revolution. They weren’t normally invited. When they killed that many people in one day, that was it for me, I had had it. I felt that it was my children who were getting killed and hurt, [so] I went and booked a coach [to London]. [My husband] said “why did you do that? you haven’t even spoken to the men about it.” I said that “we’re going to fill the coach, even if we fill it with women.” That was the turning point where I was prepared, if anyone was to say to me, “You don’t have the right,” I would say, “Yes I do.” There’s a point where you go past thinking, am I supposed to do, am I not supposed to do. It’s something you have to do, it’s obligatory. So for me, [Jumaat al-Karamah] was the turning point. As the experiences of activists like Nadia and others illustrate, Yemen’s revolution not only brought diaspora members out in public to protest, but also increased the political participation of Yemeni women as well. From one of Yemen’s largest concentrated communities in the United States, a community organizer named Adel also observed that the massacre had a counteractive effect on the pro-regime protests in Dearborn, Michigan. At the beginning, just a few people showed up to a small demonstration. But especially after the Friday of Dignity, lots of people showed up. There were also two demonstrations that were big in numbers that were pro-government. And those were the people who were members of [Saleh’s] Al-Mu’tamar [General People’s Congress] party. They showed up with the president’s pictures. But after that Friday, I don’t think they did anything after that. Some of them kind of joined the revolution and some of them just stayed on their own. And the last [pro-Saleh] one was kind of an embarrassment because only like ten or eleven people showed up to the city hall. In all, regime repression at home undermined the weak effects of transnational repression in the Yemeni diaspora and, as I explain below, stoked the outrage needed for community members to condemn Ali Abdullah Saleh. As a result, anti-regime activists, both new and old, came together to wield voice as never before. 4.2 the breakdown (and resurgence) of conflict transmission 4.2.1 The Libyan Revolution and Diaspora Solidarity In addition to upending transnational repression, the rapid escalation of a zerosum standoff in Libya also undermined conflict transmission and induced https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press