Word: maines
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...other night, as I drove down one of New York's more conventional and lovable Main Streets - Bleecker, west of Sixth - looking at the glowing shopfronts and bustling restaurants and strolling pedestrians, I had a sudden elegiac impulse to register the scene and its details. Because, I thought, once a Depression descended, these same blocks would look and feel very different; in 2010 or 2011, I might think back to this particular evening - autumn! twilight! - and remember how sweet and jolly the city had felt and looked not so long...
...capital, the main bazaar is located smack in the middle of the city, between the wealthy to the north and the poorer southern neighborhoods - the pivot on which Iranian society revolves. And signs of discontent in the bazaar alleys could be seen months before the election. In October 2008, bazaaris closed down their shops in Tehran, Isfahan and other large cities for several days in objection to a new sales tax that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had implemented. It was the first general bazaar strike since the Islamic revolution, and the President quickly backed down and suspended...
...recounting the numerous times bazaars in all major cities went on strike to protest the Shah's autocratic rule. The family networks of bazaaris as well as their business networks were so intertwined with the Shi'a clergy that Iran experts spoke of the "bazaar-mosque" alliance as the main reason for the toppling of the Pahlavi monarchy. But is that alliance still holding strong in the wake of the largest protests in Iran since 1979? Could opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi persuade the bazaaris to strike in support of him? (See pictures of the turbulent aftermath of Iran...
Mousavi's supporters are trying to get the bazaar on his side. One of the marches in the weeks after Iran's June election went from Imam Khomeini Square past Tehran's main bazaar. According to a witness, thousands of bazaaris closed their shops so they could stand outside and watch hundreds of thousands of green-clad protesters silently walk by. In fact, the route had been designed to draw Iran's merchants and workers into the growing opposition coalition to make it seem as if it had the support of Iran's commercial sector...
...price controls and food cooperatives during the Iran-Iraq war. But younger managers and workers generally express support for Mousavi, even though, as one pointed out, "Mousavi never visited the bazaar before the election." Bazaaris felt slighted by the snub, and since the bazaar's merchants are still a main conduit to Iran's smaller towns and rural areas, this was undoubtedly communicated outside the bazaar as well...