Erstellt am: 26. 1. 2011 - 14:55 Uhr

Chat Like an Egyptian

Social network media lets us all be part of a possible revolution.

Thousands of protesters spilled into the streets of Egypt yesterday, an unprecedented display of anti-government rage inspired in part by the tumult in the nearby North African nation of Tunisia.
Three people died in the clashes between protesters and police - two demonstrators died in the eastern city of Suez, and one policeman was killed in Cairo.
Throngs in the sprawling capital city marched from the huge Tahrir Square toward the parliament building demanding an end to the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
Mobilized by social network media, especially twitter and facebook, the Egyptian people got inventive when they found that twitter and cell phone access had been cut off by the authorities in downtown Cairo last night...

I spent the better part of last night on facebook with my relatives in Cairo and they had some pretty good stories to tell about the day's events.

Egyptian Innovation
While thousands were on the streets of downtown Cairo, hundreds of people in the apartment buildings in the area were deactivating the passwords of their routers and literally holding the routers out of windows and balconeys so the protesters on the streets could have wifi access! Besides that, restaurants were handing out free food to the demonstrators and while people were ripping down the posters of President Mubarak that are everywhere in Cairo, there were eyewitness accounts of riot police tearing off their uniform jackets and joining the protesters.

Family Insight
My cousins range in age from 26 to 32 and they are quite excited at the prospect of a regime change motivated by the sheer will of the people and not a religious or authoritarian power. They emphasised to me that the Egyptian Interior Ministry was wanting to blame the protests on the Muslim Brotherhood but that at least 20% of the protesters were Christians and that the high number of women on the streets had a calming effect on the potential for violence. My cousins did however warn that the protesters did not take kindly to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement yesterday that Egypt had a stable government and that the protesters should avoid violence. On the liveblogs and twitterfeeds that my cousins and I were following together last night, you could see the heavy prescence of Palestinians weighing in on Clinton's statements.

I was born not too far from where the protests were taking place in Cairo last night and where they are set to continue today. When I was born, my then 26 year-old Egyptian father decided he wanted his child to have a future free of corruption and oppression and so he emigrated to Canada. The political climate of Egypt has partly shaped my identity and the lives of my very close-knit family. My father is cautiously, not exactly optimistic but also not totally pessimistic about what's going on down in Egypt right now. My cousins in Cairo can't help but be excited and hopeful as they maintain The Classic Higazi Sense of Humour and are calling the events in Egypt, so far, The Falafel Revolution.