Alan Chin in Cairo: “Yesterday I was a Demonstrator. Today I Build Egypt”
People here in Cairo continued their celebration of Mubarek’s downfall into a second day and night, and also began to clean-up. Some wore signs that read “Yesterday I was a demonstrator. Today I build Egypt.” That was an accurate sense of the mood, with swarms of volunteers wielding brooms and dismantling barricades. At times it felt that some of the work was even a bit premature, with painters touching up the black-and-white traffic markings on the sidewalk curbs while tens of thousands of people were still crowded in Tahrir Square.
Others simply exulted in the holiday atmosphere and enjoyed themselves at what has become an enormous block party. This young man was blaring pop music from his scooter’s speakers, and took it easy:
And this man was proudly holding a doll, which looked like it may have come from a wedding display. I admit I laughed out loud, and I wasn’t the only one, nor the only photographer!
The goodwill between the people and the army has been extraordinary, with many scenes of handshakes and posing for photographs next to tanks and armored personnel carriers. From the highest levels of the Supreme Command Council, it became clear that the generals were absolutely committed to avoiding bloodshed; that restraint bodes well for civil society. But underlying the fraternity is a fundamental uncertainty and fragile tension concerning how the military will rule, and what will come next.
–Alan Chin
PHOTOGRAPHS by ALAN CHIN
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a quote from
the workers, middle class, military junta, and the permanent revolution
yep, it’s not over at all.
All classes in Egypt took part in the uprising. In Tahrir Square you found sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, together with the workers, middle class citizens, and the urban poor. Mubarak has managed to alienate all social classes in society including wide section of the bourgeoisie. But remember that it’s only when the mass strikes started three days ago that’s when the regime started crumbling and the army had to force Mubarak to resign because the system was about to collapse.
Some have been surprised that the workers started striking. I really don’t know what to say. This is completely idiotic. The workers have been staging the longest and most sustained strike wave in Egypt’s history since 1946, triggered by the Mahalla strike in December 2006. It’s not the workers’ fault that you were not paying attention to their news. Every single day over the past three years there was a strike in some factory whether it’s in Cairo or the provinces. These strikes were not just economic, they were also political in nature.
From day 1 of our uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. Who do you think were the protesters in Mahalla, Suez and Kafr el-Dawwar for example? However, the workers were taking part as “demonstrators” and not necessarily as “workers”– meaning, they were not moving independently. The govt had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters by its curfew, shutting down of banks and business. It was a capitalist strike, aiming at terrorizing the Egyptian people. Only when the govt tried to bring the country back to “normal” on Sunday that workers returned to their factories, discussed the current situation, and started to organize en masse, moving as a block.
The strikes waged by the workers this week were both economic and political fused together. In some of the locations the workers did not list the regime’s fall among their demands, but they used the same slogans as those protesting in Tahrir and in many cases, at least those I managed to learn about and I’m sure there are others, the workers put forward a list of political demands in solidarity with the revolution.
These workers are not going home anytime soon. They started strikes because they couldn’t feed their families anymore. They have been emboldened by Mubarak’s overthrowal, and cannot go back to their children and tell them the army has promised to bring them food and their rights in I don’t know how many months. Many of the strikers have already started raising additional demands of establishing free trade unions away from the corrupt, state backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions.
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pretty, serious things | a scrapbook
NATACHA ATLAS : ODE TO EGYPT – RISE 2 FREEDOM!
February 11, 2011 - Posted by dj umb
What is music……
without revolution…….
without freedom………..
without the will of the people winning through!
Good Luck Egypt!
Natacha Atlas
Such an amazing feeling to see fellow egyptians on the news celebrating and feeling a tremendous sense of achievement and relief, theres no way that anyone watching can fail to be moved by these events, and it shows once again that through unity , all things are possible.
I would dearly love to see all of the worlds impoverished people rise up against the corruption and the thieves posing as governments because more than three quarters of the world are suffering because of a relatively few elite blood sucking bastards are grabbing more than their fair share, all governments are criminal is what one albert camus said:
“so there is still more work to be done , however today is a great day and celebration is its order!”
18 days ago , we were watching the news completely stunned to see (live) what we never expected to see in our lifetimes we were thus inspired to remix some tunes from mounqaliba that we thought were relevant and poignant to the events as they unfolded. We dedicated the video/song to the egyptian people and their strength before mubarak resigned and todays victory is hopefully the start of many more like it…..
Natacha Atlas and Basha Beats- Egypt – Rise to Freedom 1.5 by SixDegreesRecords
Message from Natacha & Sami:
This is a remix of material from “Mounqaliba”. We were inspired to do this by the news from Tahrir Square.
Here’s a translation :
<< Mubarak : “My fellow citizens..A fine line lies between freedom…and chaos.” >>
Natacha :
Let us stand together and awaken ,
Let us question, learn and study;
Listen, understand and think.
Let us understand,
Permit us to know-
Permit us to know freedom.
Let us know there is a land
where words are the purveyors of truth,
heads are held high,
And human will is regarded above all.
Where the world is not split into a thousand fragments,
Under siege, forgotten, or lost -
Let us perceive of it,
Let us know that place.
Let us know our land,
where words are the purveyors of truth.
<< Mubarak : “My fellow citizens..A fine line lies between freedom…and -” >>
<<Crowds: “MAY HOSNI MUBARAK FALL !!”>>
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Editor's note: We saw this analysis of the twittering of the revolution, in Arabic and English, and asked Kovas Boguta if we could pick it up. He said OK. Go to his site to enlarge the graphic.
Experts say Egypt is the crystal ball in which the Arab world sees its future. Now that Mubarak has stepped down, I can share the work I've done making that metaphor tangible, and visualizing the pro-democracy movement in Egypt and across the Middle East. It is based on their Twitter activity, capturing the freedom of expression and association that is possible in that medium, and which is representative of a new collective consciousness taking form.
In a case of ironic symbolism, the far left-most satellites are the Whitehouse, State Department, and Wael Ghonim's employeer, Eric Schmidt, who is merely a speck on the map. And that's probably how everyone in the rest of the network would like this future to look.
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02/04/2011 (9:05 pm)
13 Responses to “Interview with Andy Carvin on curating Twitter to watch Tunisia, Egypt”
February 4th, 2011 at 9:33 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andy Carvin, Ethan Zuckerman, Ryan Sholin, Andrew Davies, Vesna Gerintes and others. Vesna Gerintes said: RT @EthanZ: Interview with @acarvin about his work curating news from #Egypt and #Tunisia using Twitter and Storify: http://bit.ly/erOnOF [...]
February 4th, 2011 at 10:30 pm
Alaa Abd El Fattah just tweeted from Tahrir Square: “We are learning this as we do it, everything is by ear” which encapsulates a general truth about the situation.
Andy Carvin’s curation has made following the events on Twitter much more valuable to me. He’s a trusted journalist, so when something bubbles up his tweets are a way to check credibility.
I’m not a journalist, I may have it wrong, but he seems also to serve other journalists using Twitter. Perhaps not directly, but the organization of the events entail new media, so Carvin offers his example of how to cope–he’s good at it– and conversations with journalists. Since it’s public that’s a rare window into how news is constructed.
There are so many questions because so much surrounding this event is new. Carvin’s tweets provide the news facts, but also a map of the sorts of questions journalists are asking, in other words a lesson in how to productively engage with the news.
Thanks for recognizing what Carvin is doing as important and intersting.
February 4th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
[...] with the Egyptian revolution. Today Berkman Center research Ethan Zuckerman published an excellent interview with Carvin exploring why he’s been posting an average of 400 tweets daily for the last month, and what [...]
February 5th, 2011 at 1:42 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mathew Ingram, Morgan Brown and Twitt3r News Eqentia, Social Media Filter. Social Media Filter said: RT @mathewi full interview @EthanZ did with @acarvin about his Twitter reporting on #Egypt is here: http://j.mp/gqVHbp [...]
February 5th, 2011 at 11:58 pm
Web curation has been a hot topic since last year. More and more people start to use web curation tools for difference purposes. After blogger, there is a new term called web curator. Andy Carvin’s story is a great example of how web curators can make a difference.
February 6th, 2011 at 1:25 am
[...] Ethan’s post inspired me to think the idea of Curation Commons, a term coined by me. [...]
February 6th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
[...] The complete interview is available via EthanZuckerman.com. [...]
February 7th, 2011 at 8:06 am
[...] urban hack of charging their mobile devices using the wiring in a streetlight’s base, to Andy Carvin’s retweet curation of reliable sources on the ground in and around Tahrir [...]
February 7th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
[...] Read Ethan Zuckerman’s interview with NPR’s Andy Carvin: What did you learn from this interview about using Twitter to get information to your followers? If [...]
February 8th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
[...] Leia a entrevista completa com o Andy Carvin [...]
February 11th, 2011 at 3:53 am
[...] [Full interview here.] [...]
February 11th, 2011 at 8:32 am
[...] very grateful for Al Jazeera English’s thorough, ongoing coverage of events in Egypt, and for my friend Andy Carvin’s relentless curation of Twitter, following protests in Tunisia and Egypt. But I worry that these technologies aren’t broadening [...]
February 12th, 2011 at 4:23 am
[...] and tweets all night about planned protests in Algeria, Libya and Pakistan. We can’t all become Andy Carvin, but we have a responsibility to witness and to ensure that those inspired by Egypt and Tunisia [...]