The Green Movement within the United States has several connotations with it. Whenever most people in the United States think of something "Green", they might have the idea of it being related to the environment. In Iran, this is not the case. In Iran, the original Green Movement was a protest against the government for illegal manipulation of the polls. The movement officially started in 2009. This manipulation has kept the current dictator in power, and some of the roots to this begin in the revolution of 1978. In the aftermath of the revolution, several guerrilla factions emerged in a second revolution, considered a continuation of the 1978 revolution, whose goal was to take power of the country for themselves.
These revolutions rose and fell like endless waves battering against the sea shore, but by 1982 the spiritual leader of Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini had defeated any dissent amongst the other factions that had splintered off in an effort to create their own vision of Iran and declared a theocracy to rule Iran. This dissent has done nothing but grow since then, and in the aftermath of the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the foundations of the Green Movement began to be realized.
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With the Election of 2009 people began to see the false results of the election. The people of Iran began to notice that the numbers were not quite adding up as their candidate, Hossein Mousavi, was defeated by a landslide. After the election barricades were erected in the streets and the chants began. Thousands of Mousavi's supporters flooded public commons with questions of "Where's My Vote?".
This movement only began to grow as the masses convened. These conventions turned into riots, and by June seventeenth, forty-eight people had died from protests in 2009 alone. These protests continued until 2011 where harsh government action called for the execution of the leaders of the Green Movement, and over 170 people were arrested by the government.
After the backlash from the government, the Green Movement reformed into the Green Path of Hope who has decided to protest using legal means. They no longer riot, or scream revolution in the streets but they call for a change to the government. The Green Path of Hope demands that their votes be counted, and that the voter fraud infringed upon the Iranian people by Ahmadinejad's reign end so that the country can advance into a stage of democracy.
The Green Path of Hope seeks to fight against the illegitimate government within Iran in an effort to secure peace and Democracy within the tumultuous country. The Green Path of Hope appears to be the solution to the crisis that has burned through Iran for the past two centuries, but with such extreme opposition by government forces they could just as easily be considered another guerrilla force needing to be put down despite their now-lawful and peaceful means of protest.
