Saturday, February 12, 2011
Not Teh Narrative
the first casualty of revolution are the facts
I keep coming back to this.
The Arabic administrator posted on the Arabic page an open question to readers: “What do you think we should give as a gift to the brutal Egyptian police on their day?” [Jan. 25, a national holiday celebrating the country’s widely reviled police force]
“The answer came from everyone: Tunisia Tunisia
,"
...In early January, this core of planners [the Revolutionary Youth Movement] decided they would try to replicate the accomplishments of the protesters in Tunisia who ultimately ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Their immediate concern was how to foil the Ministry of Interior, whose legions of riot police had contained and quashed protests for years. The police were expert at preventing demonstrations from growing or moving through the streets, and at keeping ordinary Egyptians away.
Successful in beating back the Alexandrian Mob for thirty years, using techniques successful for centuries. Principle among those techniques is the Law No. 162 of 1958 [aka The Emergency Law, imposed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and again after the assassination of Anwar Sadat] which suspends the right to demonstrate and allows the arrest of anyone at any time for any reason at the ruler’s pleasure and allows them to be held for indeterminate time without trial.]
"We had to find a way to prevent security from making their cordon and stopping us,” said 41-year-old architect Basem Kamel, a member of Mohamed ElBaradei’s youth wing and one of the dozen or so plotters.
“Youth groups,” “Youth wings,” youth, youth, youth. Age 41.
They met daily for two weeks in the cramped living room of the mother of Ziad al-Alimi. Mr. Alimi is a leading youth organizer for Mr. ElBaradei’s campaign group. ...
Those present included representatives from six youth movements connected to opposition political parties, groups advocating labor rights and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Labor Rights…
On Jan. 25, the first day of protests, the organizers from the youth wings of Egypt’s opposition movements created what appeared to be a spontaneous massing of residents of the slum of Bulaq al-Dakrour, on Cairo’s western edge. These demonstrators weren’t, as the popular narrative has held, educated youth who learned about protests on the Internet. They were instead poor residents who filled a maze of muddy, narrow alleyways, massed in front of a neighborhood candy store and caught security forces flatfooted.
That protest was anything but spontaneous. How the organizers pulled it off, when so many past efforts had failed, has had people scratching their heads since.
...
The group publicly called for protests at those sites for Jan. 25… They announced the sites of the demonstrations on the Internet and called for protests to begin at each one after prayers at about 2 p.m.
But that wasn’t all.
"The 21st site, no one knew about,” Mr. Kamel said.
They sent small teams to do reconnaissance on the secret 21st site. It was the Bulaq al-Dakrour neighborhood’s Hayiss Sweet Shop, whose storefront and tiled sidewalk plaza—meant to accommodate outdoor tables in warmer months—would make an easy-to-find rallying point in an otherwise tangled neighborhood no different from countless others around the city.
The plotters say they knew that the demonstrations’ success would depend on the participation of ordinary Egyptians in working-class districts like this one, where the Internet and Facebook aren’t as widely used. They distributed fliers around the city in the days leading up to the demonstration, concentrating efforts on Bulaq al-Dakrour.
Again:
They were instead poor residents who filled a maze of muddy, narrow alleyways, massed in front of a neighborhood candy store
Those were the people chosen to be the front-line troops against the “brutal police.”
...four field commanders chosen from the organizers’ committee began dispatching activists ["poor residents"] in cells of 10. To boost secrecy, only one person per cell knew their destination.
In these small groups, the protesters advanced toward the Hayiss Sweet Shop, massing into a crowd of 300 demonstrators free from police control. The lack of security prompted neighborhood residents to stream by the hundreds out of the neighborhood’s cramped alleyways, swelling the crowd into the thousands, say sweet-shop employees who watched the scene unfold.
While the police were surrounding and dispersing the other, well-publicized gatherings, these “poor residents” from “a maze of muddy, narrow alleyways” went un-noticed.
The other marches organized at mosques around the city failed to reach Tahrir Square, their efforts foiled by riot-police cordons. The Bulaq al-Dakrour marchers, the only group to reach their objective, occupied Tahrir Square for several hours until after midnight, when police attacked demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The people who evaded the police and the “Emergency Law” to occupy the square were the peasants organized by guys in their 40’s.
I’m also confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to create new opportunity—jobs and businesses that allow the extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight.
...And above all, we saw a new generation emerge—a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations.
What is the pay-off—and to whom—of Teh Narrative of The Youth?
[esp the “well-educated ‘youth’ who 1] are literate 2] are internet/technology savvy?]
---
Bone-US Question:
What would happen if a crowd of a group of actual back-woods, redneck, American peasants [real folks—not like Teh iWon Elites™ paint the TeaPartiers] gathered in DC to demand an end to government over-regulation?
What will happen when a crowd of young, tech-savvy stuuuudents gathers in DC to demand the “right” to free food/housing/clothing/medicine/iPhones?
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{/if}
