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Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman in NYC
October 28, 2011
“In her own version of Occupy Wall Street, the Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, was in town last week, leading a rally in a plaza across the street from the United Nations headquarters. Karman and hundreds of Yemeni-Americans, all energized by Qaddafi’s fall, appealed the U.N. to force President Ali Abdullah Saleh to give up power after thirty-three years of rule. Karman is a thirty-two-year-old mother of three and the first Arab woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which she shared with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee. Even before the Arab Spring, she staged weekly demonstrations and sit-ins in a central square in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. She told Dexter Filkins, who wrote about Yemen for the magazine in April, that “the whole regime has to go.” In New York, Karman’s tenacity proved somewhat successful; the U.N. passed a resolution on Friday encouraging Saleh to step down.”
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