130 Coming Out and Coming Together On the other side, the demands of pro-secessionists to prioritize the southern issue offended activists who came to feel that the southerners were the ones trying to hijack the revolution for themselves. Yazan, a youth protester from Sheffield, was outraged that some southerners at the London protests “tried to push their agenda.” He recalled, We stopped them instantly. They were never going to be allowed to push their agenda in a protest about the revolution. No – don’t be cheeky, put your flag down. [If] you want to protest that, protest it later. Right now, the South isn’t suffering on its own. “The South’s suffering, the South’s suffering.” We’re all suffering right now, mate! We’re all here for a common cause that involves the whole of Yemen, not just one bit. I was so upset, I was so angry. Because it was like some of them tried to hijack the entire thing. I was like, Yemen right now is at its most delicate. It’s just so opportunistic and I really didn’t appreciate that. But when you’re in such a sensitive state and then you go and create more division, it ruins it for everybody. Activists in the United States experienced the same tensions. Hanna, who had taken part in the pro-southern protests in New York before the revolution, said that when southern Yemenis came out for the revolution early on, One of the great things we were able to do was also bring the South Yemen Association into the movement for Yemen as a whole. Bringing everyone together, fighting for one cause, fighting for democracy and human rights, was one of our major achievements early on. [But] a couple months afterward, when a lot of southern Yemenis just got really tired of the promises and a lot of that base started remobilizing [for the South] again, the huge solidarity that we had in the beginning was starting to break. In addition, some protesters in the United States sported T-shirts with the slogans “New Yemen, United Forever” and the unity flag. Morooj from Washington, DC, reported that this made southerners feel “very marginalized.” She continued, And they were [marginalized], honestly. Because [organizers] were like, oh, that’s not our messaging now. We’re one. And so they stopped coming. They didn’t feel like it was their space, and it was unfortunate. Because we all need to be united for the Yemeni people. That doesn’t mean that we can’t have our different opinions about what Yemen should look like or whatnot. So it was difficult to have the activists from the South participate. They did in the beginning, but they weren’t respected. While Morooj recalled that some southerners rejoined them for specific events later on, they did so while holding the southern independence flag and came to speak specifically about the southern issue. “I don’t blame them,” as Fouad from New York grimaced, since all that southern Yemenis have received in general “is a lot of talk – about nothing.” Overall, as in the case of pro-secession Kurds in the Syrian diaspora, Yemen’s ethnic and regional divisions were exacerbated by the revolution at home. Southern grievances were perceived by pro-unity Yemenis as subversive to the broader cause, while pro-unity messaging came to be perceived by https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press