Protest Culture and A Different Look at the Egyptian Revolution
On January 25th, 2011 a revolution began in Egypt. Exactly one year later, people gathered for one of the largest protests to ever see Tahrir Square. The picture above was taken at 4 pm Egyptian time (about 9 am in NYC, 8 am in Milwaukee, and 6 am in LA). Around this same time, these images were ablaze in the media across the world. People had been gathering since midnight, and finally at 4 pm, when they had their highest capacity, the world was struck with these powerful images of change.
We see images like this throughout the world every so often, and they always tend to stir controversy. Most recently in America with the Occupy movement and across many Muslim countries with demands to change corrupt government and workers rights. And although not everyone may agree with these protests, gatherings, chantings, and people holding signs with bold and powerful statements, everyone at least feels the immense energy they generate. To see such a large group of people gathered together for a cause that’s important to them leaves even the most unbelieving of unbelievers a little bit touched.
While this protest a few days ago in Egypt may not have really struck a chord for people in the US, people here watched their television screens all. This poses a lot of questions… will other Middle Eastern and Northern African countries follow in their lead? Will these protests have a snowball effect, and if so, Morocco is sure to be close to the top of the line. Especially for PCVs, this could mean civil unrest, consolidation, or possibly evacuation — which would suck. There’s no eloquent way to say that being evacuated from the Peace Corps would just suck.
There were hourly updates on the protest, and it became clear as the day went on that it wasn’t just an homage to the beginning of the revolution, taking place exactly a year ago to the day. These citizens were reigniting what they felt had been lost over the last year. They were stating that while they’ve come a long way, they are not satisfied with their change.. they want more.. more rights, more freedoms, and penalties to all government officials that have ordered the revolutions leaders to be harmed or killed.
Social media has helped this cause in so many ways… many of the updates on the news were coming from people facebooking or tweeting inside the square. There was another twitter, however, offering a not so revolution-friendly account of the days events. I said before that most of the world was finding out about this protest around 4 pm Egyptian time, my twitter however started blowing up at about midnight exactly.
I’ve recently discovered, thanks to a Peace Corps newsletter, a social media tool developed by an American in Egypt called Harass Map. Harass Map encourages women in Egypt to call, text, facebook, email, or tweet any harassment activity to this website with as many or as few details as they feel comfortable, and the website consolidates the information and puts it on a map so the people of Egypt can have a visual description of all the different harassment cases in their country (from cat-calling to rape). I helps women to know that it’s OK to speak out about this type of behavior, especially because they’ve been forced to silence it for so long. Sometimes, when there is a particularly heinous crime, Harass Map will re-tweet or anonymously tweet the issue to warn women about different areas in different cities or different establishments where they could potentially be in danger. On January 25th, there were hudred of “re-tweets” from Harass Map, beginning at midnight and continuing throughout the day of sexual assault in Tahrir Square during the protest. And these weren’t just cat-calls and hisses, these were extreme cases of groping and in some cases, groups of men targeting a single women and trying to drag her away or force her somewhere, hoping to get lost in the chaos of the crowd.
This is disturbing on two fronts. The first being that the people in the square were fighting for change. They wanted their country to grow, to be to prosper and enter into a righteous and un-corrupt state. But clearly, these passions only apply when it’s convenient. They want higher pay checks! Freedom of speech! Less government interaction with their personal media! But they don’t want anyone interfering when their trying to abuse their women. Is that change? Do that paint a picture of a country you would be proud to be apart of? I hope not.
The second thing I question is how many men in the crowd were actually there in support of the revolution, and how many were there to attempt assault? Clearly hundreds of men heard wind of the gathering and flocked for this purpose only. They say thousands of people were there. So while it may not be a small percentage, it is a percentage.
I think it’s outstanding that Egypt has a media tool like this, and I hope it expands to other countries around this side of the world soon… and every country eventually. Although countries like Egypt and Morocco may be difficult to live in as a woman because of these circumstances, we all know it happens everywhere, in every country, even the ones like America where we think it’s absent. And doesn’t that make you think twice about all the protests? In the Middle East or the Americas, whether it’s in Tahrir Square or on Wall Street… does it make them a little harder to stand behind?
