JOIN US:

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026: POETRY READING

PLACE: THE HISTORIC STARRY PLOUGH PUB, 3101 SHATTUCK AVENUE, BERKELEY, CA

TIME: DOORS OPEN 4PM, PROGRAM 5PM

HONOR THE 2022 WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM UPRISING IN IRAN – ITS PAST AND ITS FUTURE

FREE IRAN’S POLITICAL PRISONERS / STOP EXECUTIONS

END U.S.-ISRAELI WAR

Four years since the fierce Woman, Life, Freedom uprising touched off by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody, Iranian society is racked by expansive and intensive war and destruction, mass imprisonment and daily executions. All this is up against the backdrop of the relentless U.S. backed Israeli Nazi genocide in Gaza. We hold this poetry reading to honor the fighters and dreamers for a better world – in unity with all the masses of people in Iran and worldwide to burn the cage and free the bird for our collective future.

POETS: Mahnaz Badihian, Rafael Jesús González, Karen Melander Magoon, Kim Shuck, Raymond Nat Turner, Lorene Zarou-Zouzounis

In late August, there was an open letter in The Guardian addressed to Iran’s political prisoners signed by prominent activists and intellectuals from around the world. It caused a virtual firestorm of attacks with false accusations that it somehow equalized the crimes of Iran’s theocratic regime with the more towering crimes of U.S. imperialists in its imagery of Iran’s prisoners trapped between two blades of scissors. It did not.

For the record, here are excerpts of a response posted on social media in September, by a group of Iran’s political prisoners.

The response of Iran's Political Prisoners and Justice Seekers to Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Michael Löwy, and All Signatories to the Letter of Solidarity:

From behind the tall walls and locked cells of Iran's prisons, we heard your voice....[and] sincerely thank you for your solidarity. That you have seen us and spoken our names amid all the clamor of war and censorship is a small light for us, as we breathe in the darkness of the cells.

As you rightly wrote, we are trapped between the two blades of a pair of scissors. On one side stands an apparatus that sends us, for the crime of protesting, writing, or even contacting the media, to cells where death is ever-present; and on the other are the bombs and sanctions that come crashing down upon ordinary people. We feel this reality in our flesh and bones every day….And now, with the escalation of the war, the pressure had mounted even further. Executions have accelerated, psychological torture has intensified, and justice seekers—mothers, fathers, spouses, and those whose only demand is justice for their loved ones— are being increasingly hemmed in….Under these circumstances, your support is vital to us.

But we need broader support: …We need a form of solidarity that carries our voices beyond these walls and raises the cost of repression for any power that instrumentalizes human life…. True solidarity means that we neither surrender to one blade of the scissors nor ignore the other. We are still here. We are still breathing. We still stand by the promise we made to one another: we will not surrender. And your voice, if it continues and spreads, can become part of a rope that pulls us out of this darkness.

--With respect and in the hope of broader solidarity, A Group of Political Prisoners and Justice Seekers in Iran (Full statement here)

On this Anniversary, We Honor the Crucial Role of Courageous Women in the Hope for Liberation Worldwide

Say their names: Renee Good and Mahboubeh Shabani

Two women – 37 year young Renee murdered by ICE Gestapo in the U.S. belly of the beast, for resisting the fascist Trump regime immigrant ethnic cleansing rampage; and 33 year young Mahboubeh sentenced to death for taking wounded protesters to the hospital on her motorbike during the January 2026 mass uprising and bloody regime crackdown in Iran.

These two women model the bravery and humanity that our world needs right now, the same quality exhibited by millions during the Mahsa Amini (or Woman, Life, Freedom) uprising.

Our solidarity in this poetry reading adds one measure of hope in remembering past struggles, but more, for us to unite and rise to the challenge of future ones, hand in hand across today’s rising oceans and drone-filled clouded skies. Even as more is needed in the struggle to bring forward a truly liberating way — for women, for men and most especially for the children of Iran, for the Middle East and the world – our poetry is to celebrate “unity and solidarity together and the power that is formed by being ‘us’.”

We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! STOP EXECUTIONS!

We say to the U.S government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN, LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!