I thought this kind of images belong to the past. To the hard times where our voices were shut. I thougth the day our people united and rose, we became too strong to be humiliated. Alas I was wrong. The events at Tahrir Square this week-end, where the SCAF beats and kills protestors prove that we still have to deal with tyranny in Egypt.
There is this video/pictures of a niqabi girl lying on the floor, surrounded by not less than 5 soldiers, her jilbab torn off revealing a white skin and a blue bra and beaten, again, and again. I can hardly imagime the terror, the pain, as well as the shame she must have felt at this moment. I wish I could take some of it to bear with her. Alas I can’t; all I can do is to tell her, I swear to God, she embodies the dignity and the pride of my country, of our great Egypt. She is the strentgh, she is the truth, she is the right fight. She is the only human being I see on this picture.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement grows and enhances other occupy movements in the United States (occupy Boston, etc) and in the world (as far as in Japan, Taiwan), I was remembering a note I wrote on May 2011 called To all the Tahrir Squares in the World where I was saying that with the Spanish Indignados unrest movement inspired by the Tunisian/Egyptian revolutions, we are seeing the beginning of a global phenomenon spreading much beyond the Arab World. Everywhere, the same basic demand: asking for a fairer world.
As a citizen of the world, there is one thing I always admired in Americans: their talent in putting the right words on things. In french we would say they have le sens de la formule, meaning ‘the sense of the right formula/sentence’. I don’t know who said first ‘We are the 99%’ , but I think it sums it up perfectly.
The ‘occupy’ movements demands are noble, they are right. But can they make a real difference? After all, the spanish Indignados movement did not result in reforms or change in the state of the things in Spain. The Greek protests did not prevent the new rules of the game dictated by the CEB and IMF. Things just carry on like they were, except for the traffic jam caused by the protests. If it is true these movements have raised the awareness in the Western World on the unnatural financial order in the world that does not even benefit to population of the rich countries, they yet fail in having any concrete impact on decision-makers. The problem maybe of these movements in Europe was that although the demands were clear and fair, the protests did not challenge the establishment. In other words: because we all understood the unrest will never reach point of a real physical revolution even if the demands are not fulfilled. In the worst case the young people will abstain at the next elections and that, the decision makers know it. Politicians are keen to do a lot of things to ensure people voting for them, dismantling a dysfunctioning system that feeds them is not one of them.
Same goes for the Occupy Wall Street movement: it can make a difference only if the 1% understand that the 99% will put their fight above everything else and anything else, including themselves. The crucial point for the Arab Spring is that governments are falling or shaking because they understood that people are ready to die for their ideas and that everytime somebody dies, the crowd does not diminish in size but augments. Because they know that from Friday to Friday, the rage of the protesters becomes more and more physically impossible to contain for police/armed forces.
It is not about being violent during the protests, it is about making clear that even if a crowd is met by violence – and we are not talking about pepper spray, we are talking about another level of violence that can cost lives – the crowd will still continue and in the contrary they will glorify the sacrifice of every single life. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions succeeded because even if the protesters where peaceful and unarmed, the repressive forces were forced to give up, because they were totally out of control of the situation. Because they knew that they will be unable to stop the crowd marching towards the ministries or presidential palaces at the risk of their lives.
Now, the Occupy Wall Street movement, if it really wants to change the world and impact on the financial world, should understand that nothing concrete will happen until the 1% really feel threatened from inside their ivory tower by the 99% that are ready to bring down the tower, and sit on everything that is in it. It is not about sending death threats to these people, it is about making their outrageous lifestyle and actions impossible to continue. In that country where a very few people managed to send thousands of young Americans to go get killed in Irak just for oil, it is already a fact the of Occupy Wall Street movement is opposing nothing else but people that really consider owning the lives of Americans and that will not hesitate to sacrifice all what it needs to maintain the system as it is.
To occupy wall street protesters, I know I am nobody to give my ‘advice’: if you really mean to change things, push for occupying Wall Street for real, and make understand that you are ready to physically sacrifice for it (not that events have to turn violent, but note that in front of you, you have a lot of people ready to do anything legal and illegal to satisfy their greed). Make understand that your intention is not only shouting against capitalism outside buildings in a park nearby, but that you will interrupt the financial activities inside. Only when the 1% inside the buildings of Wall Street will understand that the 99% outside have no upper limit in their determination to perturb the financial markets, they will consider reforms of the financial system. Occupy Wall Street can be a real difference, give yourself the means for it to happen.
People say Tahrir Square inspired the world. Revolutionnaries from everywhere will use this template for carrying revolts and ask for dignity, freedom and rights. So when a social unrest movement started in Israel in July 14th, many commentors wanted to see in it one of the many waves generated by the ‘Arab Spring’. The Israelis are gathering in Tel-Aviv in increasing numbers since three weeks (when a young activist settled a tent on Rotschild street) to protest against high rents in Israel. The number of participants have reached 300’000 people.
Even Israelis sometimes say themselves they were inspired by Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. A famous picture shows a protestor carrying a sign saying “Walk like an Egyptian“, and sometimes signs are written in hebrew and in arabic.
But alas, Tel-Aviv is not Tahrir. It is not sufficient to claim making an arab-like revolution for it to be truly one. Our Arab revolutions were, before to be about costs of living (even if it’s true they were too about it), about justice and freedom, end of violence and torture. One of the famous Tunisian mottos even was “Bread and Salt, but not Ben Ali” (“bread and salt” is a Tunisian expression meaning eating very poorly); many Libyans droped out the oil income Gaddafi was giving them and the privileges Arabs had among Berbers in Libya, because they know the Libyan people freedom knows no price high enough to be sold; Bahraini were among the first to rise in February although they are certainly not the poorest in the Arab World, because they don’t want to live in a golden cage.
The problem with the Israeli protests is that they are claiming against Netanyehou government for the very wrong reasons. They complain about high rents but without firmly condemning the aspects of the housing policy that discriminates Palestinians, excludes them out of towns, encourages settlements and land expropriation. By silenting on these issues, they just say they will buy it, if only a little more discount is made. Paying too much taxes is an issue for the Israeli citizen, but nor apartheid, nor the crimes of Tsahal are. The fact that a war criminal like Tzipi Livni endorses the unrest demands proves that the rights of Palestinians are totally out of interest for the July 14th movement.
Many activists say they don’t mention the Palestinian issue in the protests demands because they want the movement to keep “apolitical”. Way of pushing aside the embarrassing questions: indeed, unjustice and human rights violations are beyond ‘politics’ in real democracies, while it is political only in phantom democracies. For the huge majority of the people in the streets in Tel-Aviv, if a little effort is made by the government to lower rents or find solutions to build a new campus for Israeli students, they will easily leave the streets, and carry on with their lives, satisfied with themselves as revolutionnaries with this revolution on the cheap.
Thus, the current Israeli unrest is the negation of Justice, it is the negation of the Tahrir spirit.
The story of Manal Al Sharif, a 32 years old Saudi woman jailed 10 days for defying the driving ban in her country, is a perfect illustration of the extreme repression endured by Saudi women. Her act – being filmed while driving and uploading the video to promote the Women2Drive campaign – was courageous and thus inspired other women in the Kingdom to follow her example. She expressed in the video the wish that she would be only the beginning of the revolt of women like “the first drop is the beginning of the rain”.
She enhanced a movement that had repercussion far beyond Saudi Arabia: many feminist associations, many NGOs, many papers talked about the event and certainly contributed in the global awareness on the terrific situation of women rights in the Gulf. Meanwhile, Femen, a feminist association in Ukraine organized a solidarity protest protest in Kiev around the Saudi Embassy where several of the protestors showed up topless.
So what is the outcome of the Manal Al-Sharif case?
Manal Al Sharif encouraged women (and men!) in her country to stand for their rights. Several dozen of people follow now her example to break the unfair rules. She showed that Saudi women are courageous enough to take themselves the initiative. What is interesting is that she cares more aboout driving than about, for example, wearing or not the veil: she wants to achieve men/women equality through equal rights to act (drive, express, vote, work, etc), not just through her appearance. Thus her contribution to women cause is positive.
Femen activists exhibited their own bodies and contributed in nothing neither for Manal Al Sharif, neither for Saudi women, neither for Ukranian women. They finished doing exactly what sexists do: use women’s body as an object. What message did Femen send to the world? “We, women, we can’t do anything, we can’t draw attention unless we exhibit our breasts”. Thus, their contribution to women cause is negative.
The feminism of Manal Al Sharif is constructive because it breaks the prejudice about “women consisting only in an empty body”, while the feminism of topless Femen activists is destructive because it does nothing else than enforcing this prejudice. Manal Al-Sharif uses provocation as a tool to change the law, Femen use provocation for the sole purpose of having the feeling to exist. The sad thing is that certainly Femen wants to act to improve women’s rights: but just type “Femen” in a search engine, all you will find is hundreds of entries about the “topless protests”.
At the end of the day, Femen may be very active, the world associates Femen to nothing else than to naked women, while Manal Al Sharif became a model for women not because of how she looks, but because of how she acts. And that makes a huge difference.
May 1st Egypt traditionnally celebrates the International Workers’ Day. The 29 last times, this was the occasion of a speech of Hosni Mubarak, gloryfying Egypt labour forces, the hardwork to build the Nation, and so on. Very abstract, indeed, given the fact that Mubarak and his team were neglecting as much as it can be the Egyptian workers, their difficult working conditions and their indecently low wages. May 1st 2011 will be maybe the first Workers’ Day in Egypt where the workers will be really celebrated.
But what about the Egyptian workers and the Revolution? International community had on the Egyptian Revolutionnaries an image of young, urban, well-educated people, tweeting, facebooking, gathering on Tahrir Square. The truth is that Tahrir Square and the young people might well have been the firestarter of the January 25th movement that ousted dictator Mubarak and one of the most visible “showcases” displaying what happens in Egypt, revolution still was much more than this. First, it has to be pointed out that before 2011, all social and political movements in Egypt were essentially due to the working class. Such for example were the cotton industry workers: throughout all post-colonial history of Egypt, the workers in the factories in Mahalla al-Kubra, the main location of the cotton industry, were leading protests in order to ask for their rights. Al Jazeera broadcast about Mahalla al-Kubra is quite enlightening concerning this topic:
Communist or popular social movements most came from Mahalla al Kubra. The demands were less “politically worded” but essentially focused on equality, decent living conditions, end of corruption. 10, 20, 30 years before Twitter or Facebook ever existed, these movements already existed.
In the post-September 11th world, the natinonal scale movements did not start in 2011; for example, the call of national strike of the April 6th movement (who invented the know well spread in the Arab World expression “Yom elGhadhb“=”Day of Anger“) gathered millions of Egyptians, from all social conditions. One has merely to see 2011 and Tahrir Square like being the decisive step of the chain reaction called the Egyptian Revolution (where the Tunisian Revolution acted on Egypt like a catalyzer), but not being all the Egyptian Revolution itself. After the ousting of the Dictator on February 11th, the strikes, protests, calls from syndicated workers increase in power and ask for decent conditions.
Today, as Egypt celebrates the Workers’ Day, it has to be remembered that no democratic Nation builds without fair conditions for the working class. Most of Egyptian workers still earn as low as 2$ per day, most of the economy is still centralized in Cairo, letting the rest of Egypt poorly industrialy developped, too many Egyptians must emigrate to find a job, too many children labour is still used in factories of small businesses. A first workshop on the burning issue of the minimum wage in Egypt was organized by the Ministry of Finance with participation of international Labour Organization, syndicates and other experts and representative: a good first step towards equality.
One of the misleads to avoid is to open the Egyptian market to too much liberalist/capitalist market; indeed, entrepreuneurs/inverstors workshops often take place now in Egypt (like for example the Cairo Startup Weekend of April 28-30 powered by the Kauffmann Fundation, an American Entrepreneur association willing to expand American market model), where cooperations are willing to build, in a free market perspective. If economy growth has to be enhanced, and the cost of years of corruption to be damped, it would be a mistake to try to import to Egypt too much of “American business” style. Egypt is a ‘Social Republic’ since the Independance, and if these words were a bit meaningless until now, since Febrary 2011 we have in our hand the tools to not become an ultra competitive, consumption-centered society. A Revolution has been made by the Egyptians for the Egyptians; not for the benefit alone of investors and investment.
