This Saturday in November, the roles are reversed on Hollywood Boulevard. A Spiderman and a Batman in threadbare costumes watch, intrigued, passers-by leave the mall housing the Dolby Theater, where the Oscars ceremony is held each year. That afternoon, neither red carpet nor photocall, but the same rallying sign: green-white-red, the colors of the Iranian flag.
In the center of the banner, the country’s emblem, a tulip-shaped monogram adopted in 1980 by Ayatollah Khomeini, has been replaced by the solar lion of Persia which appeared on the flag before the revolution. The cursed emblem was sometimes simply erased with three words, “ Woman. Life. Freedom “, the cry of anger of the Iranian demonstrators since the death of the young Mahsa Amini.
In front of La La Land, an XXL souvenir shop, a family poses next to a portrait of the Shah, who reigned over Iran before the Islamic revolution of 1979. Just opposite, two women have set up a stand of flags at the foot of a poster Captain America “. A young man walks past without stopping, his T-shirt serving as a sign: an almost exhausted laptop battery is drawn on it, above which we can read: “Islamic Republic of Iran”. On a stretch of the boulevard still open to traffic, a Harley Davidson parades with intertwined Iranian and American flags, while a young demonstrator joins the crowd, waving the Israeli and Iranian flags side by side.
“I think what’s happening in Iran is a revolution, so I don’t care who’s leading it, if she can bring down the regime, I’m doing everything I can to support her. » Roozbeh Farahanipour, restaurateur
The laws of geopolitics sway on the sidewalk paved with stars where the Iranian community of Los Angeles has made an appointment. Since Iran has been rocked by an uprising that many here hope will be revolutionary, the Iranian Americans followed the steps of the Iranian demonstrators. Born in Iran or the United States, they post their messages of support on Instagram, retweet images of Iranian women removing their veils, organize happenings and fundraisers. And in a country where demonstrations are rare, they brought together thousands of people in Downtown, the business district of Los Angeles, and in Beverly Hills, before this new mobilization, on November 19, on Hollywood Boulevard.
“I think what is happening in Iran is a revolution, it is the last chapter of the Islamic Republic, so I don’t care who leads this revolution, if it can bring down the regime, I do everything I can to support her, says Roozbeh Farahanipour, former leader of an opposition party in Iran, who in just over twenty years has become a successful restaurateur and president of the Chamber of Commerce in Westwood, the chosen land of Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles. The district is also nicknamed “Tehrangeles”, a portmanteau of “Tehran”, the Iranian capital in English, and “Los Angeles”.
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