Don't Tweet the Iranian Revolution Without Me

The protests with tens of thousands of participants in Iran dwarf the one Wednesday afternoon in Orange County with just shy of 1,000 locals (by some counts), but the word about demonstrating dissent on both sides of the world spread the same way: via blogs, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, other online social networking, good old-fashioned emailing and--who knows?--perhaps even those ancient phone and fax machines.

Weekly photographer Christopher Victorio was told on the scene--just outside the District at Tustin Legacy shopping plaza at the intersection of Barranca Parkway and Jamboree Road--to expect 10,000 protesters. You can see from his damn-fine shots that the crowd never got that huge. But those present were loud, boisterous, wearing green, shouting support for opposition presidential candidate and possible grand theft victim Mir-Hossein Mousavi and damning the alleged perpetrator of that crime, "re-elected" president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Don't be too hard on those who did not make it out to join the fun. The Persian TV ratings war was heating up at the time with a My Mother the Infidel Car marathon running against the hot new reality show I'm a Shah Royalist, Get Me Out of Here!

Seriously, Aria Ghafari of Laguna Niguel told the Weekly beforehand it was shaping up to be one of the biggest Iranian protests in America so far. "Given that we have one of the largest Persian populations outside of Iran here in Orange County, and crazy Dana is calling for regime change, I'm hoping the media is interested in covering it."

The media did not disappoint (here, here, here, etc., etc.)