Tweets by AJEG20

Activist Fatma Ramadan: Which strikes can we support? who was protesting:
1- Workers in the factories or the services sector or govt civil service,
2- Professionals: Journalists, Doctors, Teachers, Profs, Lawyers,
3- Petty bourgeoisie: Shop owners, owners of trucks and pharmacies..

The attack by govt on workers is escalating, because of the economic crisis. Most of the strikes by the workers were induced by sackings, layoffs, liquidation of business, privatization.
There are mass layoffs in 10th of Ramadan, 6th of October, Port Said..

Layoffs in auto industry:
In cases, workers haven’t gotten paid for months, like El-Nile Cottons. Workers staged sitins in El-Minya, despite SS intimidation..
Railway workers have been staging industrial actions over the last period.. Drivers brought trains to halt. They have so much power.. Signal Operators too… However the technicians were less powerful, it took them two days to start creating impact on the govt.. Those in the Railways administrative affairs (poor civil servants) also have demands. The govt has been dividing and ruling .. Railway workers leaders have to unite and avoid this..
Fatma cites tons of other examples from the recent factories strikes..
“But there is also hope.”
Cement Tora scored victories..

The 30% bonus decreed by Mubarak last year hasn’t been paid to many workers up till now… El-Nile Cottons, Cleopatra Ceramics are just two examples.. This has led to more protests…
The explosive issue in govt civil service is temporary employment.. There have been

Another category:
Microbus Drivers have been suffering from the police corruption and fines imposed by the traffic authorities…
The implementation of the Traffic Law is marred with corruption, with fines and penalties reaching imprisonment.

Lawyers’s strike escalated
Lawyers are subject to systematic abuse by the police and court officials
They are also mobilizing against the new infamous increase in the fees of court procedures, which means people will not afford any more filing legal suits..

Pharmacists: The strike called for by the Syndicate against the new tax law…
Pharmacists in the provinces, especially poor pharmacies, will suffer a lot. It’s not true the big pharmacists were the only beneficiaries of the new tax law. It’s mostly the poor pharmacies (70% of the pharmacies)

The cheapest truck would be on million egyptian pounds. The drivers are not workers. Some of them are owners of their vehicles.

The govt decree of course encourages monopoly, for the sake of big business.. But I can’t treat the truck driver in the same way as the worker.

Capitalists can go on strike, like what happens in Venezuela, which is not necessarily the case in Egypt. We support strikes against the regime. But not all strikes (espcially those by the truck drivers and the big pharmacies) are what we aspire for to bring down the system.. But we can’t denounce those strikes..
I have to be clear about my priorities when I’m devoting efforts to a solidarity campaign with a strike. Workers strikes have the priority

Audience contributions:
Blogger Ahmad Abdel Fattah: How can we build a media network to monitor strikes? The best solidarity we can give the labor movement is spread its news, and alert activists and journalists to what’s going on minute by minute.
Jaiku is a good service for that.. Why don’t we launch a jaiku channel for labor news. We have to train fellow journalists and activists on how to use Jaiku and the internet tools to disseminate information quickly..
The State TV directors and presenters, because they read about the workers strikes, got inspired into action. This means we have to put more effort into spreading the word about the workers actions.

Marwa: Not all pharmacists are rich, and not all strikers were the owners of the big pharmacies…
We supported the strikes of the Judges, though they were not poor. But we saw their movement as something that could encourage and mobilize other sectors in the society to move..
We should support, carefully, the pharmacists strike. The lorry drivers are a different case..

Another contributor: The reason why everyone heard of the pharmacists and the lorry drivers strikes, and not much about Mahalla, is that the former have access to wealth.
Those who would be harmed by the law are essentially the owners of the trucks not the drivers.
When a capitalist is about to lose his business because of some law, he’s more than happy to flood the newspapers with advertisement that “Poor families will lose their jobs”, but when they sack their workers, they forget about this talk…

Another contributor: We have to groom labor leaders.. We have to be in touch with the working class..

I’ve just made a five minute contribution about the importance of media, social media, and briefly explained the live blogging that I’ve been doing..

Fatma is wrapping up: We have to bring strike leaders, exchange experiences and pool in our resources.. The labor leaders have to meet up face to face, and coordinate their actions. When one factory will go on srtrike, others will strike in solidarity..
Media is important. Workers during strikes always as “Are we alone?” They get demoralized when they do not read any thing about their actions in the media..
The Amanco strike was lost, mainly because of the lack of support from the media.. Nothing was written about them. The owners managed to isolate the workers actions and crush the strike
We shouldn’t wait for the media. The bloggers are doing a good job. We have to encourage the young bloggers to continue their activism and dissemination of info..
We support the pharmacists and lorry drivers strikes, coz their actions help break down monopoly, but again let’s not have illusions about the limitations of that movement. These are not workers.

The first speaker is Dr. Muhammad el-Beltaggi, a parliamentarian with the Muslim Brothers. He is now talking about the history of the conflict, making no reference however to religion at all. He’s talking about “Imperialism”, “Zionism”, but no mention of the religious rhetoric at all, up till now at least.
–Dr. Beltaggi is stressing that resistance is the only way forward, against the Zionist State.. The criticisms made against the Arab regimes however is diluted. Beltaggi didn’t mention the word “Mubarak” up till now.
— “No place for peace with such a barbaric entity like the Zionist entity. Resistance is the only option,” says Beltaggi
–Beltaggi, just finished his speech now. He spoke very eloquently, did not mention any word about religion. You could have mistaken him for a secular nationalist if you didn’t know he was MB. Still, his criticism of the regime is mild. He’s criticizing the “Egyptian leadership” for pressuring the Palestinians and for the siege coordinated with the Zionists.

–Sayyed Abdel Moneim now of the Center for Socialist Studies is now speaking.
–He’s discussing the historical ties between imperialism and the establishment of the Zionist state
–Israel has always been a base for imperialism in the region, Be it brits or or later the Americans.
–Why can’t the Palestinians, despite their bravery, not able to liberate their land? They are up against big imperial powers who are backing Israel, and they need extra help from their neighbors.
–Sayyed is talking about the rise of Zionism, as a reaction to the antisemitism in Europe in the age of colonialism
–“There is so much oil in this region. There is the Suez canal. This region is strategic. The imperial powers are using the Zionist settlers in Palestine in protect their interests in the region.
–Zionism sees Jews and Gentiles as irreconcilable, and cannot live together, according to the Zionist myths..
–Those who carry out attacks against Jews abroad in Europe and elsewhere give legitimacy to the Zionist logic. We should be firmly opposed to any attacks on synagogues in Europe. “Zionism and Anti-Semitism are two faces of the same coin,” says Sayyed.
–The Arab regimes do not care about Palestine. From 1948 till today, the role of the regimes have been negative…
–Sayyed is lashing out against the Egyptian regime for its complicity in the warcrimes and the siege
–The Palestinians on their own cannot liberate Palestine. The Arabs have to get involved. The biggest aid we can give them is overthrowing the regimes that are ruling us and are agents of imperialism and zionism

–Medhat el-Zahed, Consulting Editor of El-Badeel and leftist activist is now speaking.
–He’s making reference to Rachel Couri, who died defending the Palestinians.
–Medhad is talking about international solidarity with the Palestinians, which is not limited only to the Arab and Muslim Worlds.
–Medhat is praising Noam Chomsky, who’s Jewish, but at the same time a harsh critic of Israel. We have to end this mix up and confusion between Zionism and Judaism..
— There is a “globalization of people” vs. “globalization of capital,” says Medhat.
–The international solidarity is a a main asset in the fight against Israel.
–The Palestinian national liberation movement has managed to stand strongly in the face of Israel during the war on Gaza, and same for Lebanon in 2006
–But there are problems, according to Medhat, saying there should be diversification of the forms of resistance. “Things should not be limited to missiles only,” Medhat says. “We need mass participation of the Palestinians in resistance, including peaceful actions.”
–The military operations also shouldn’t be limited to the rockets. Operations against the settlements should escalate
–Medhat is also calling for unity between the Palestinian resistance factions. “Factions should discuss what is the next step, and agree together.”
–Medhat is also extremely concerned about the separation between Gaza and the West Bank.

Medhat has finished.. Now the floor is open for discussion. The contributions from the floor are critical of the MB’s stand towards the Arab regimes and is asking why aren’t the MBs bold enough to expose Mubarak and his allies. But the atmosphere is not tense and the dialogue is taking place in a civilized way.

I think I’ll stop here, and take some more pix. Excuse the typos and some of the points I missed blogging about above. It’s my first time to try Live-Blogging an event here in the center. I hope I tweak and improve this technique in the future by more practice.

I think it’s something useful and we need to do in coming activist conferences whenever we can.. say the coming Cairo Anti-War Conference, London’s Marxism, Cairo’s Socialist Days, or what have you. The organizers should do their best to make wi-fi internet access available for participants. This gives the opportunity for activists to live-blog the event, take photos and videos and upload them right away online to share with thousands if not millions of fellow activists around the world.

I don’t think the logistics of it is really difficult, right? Some friends had suggested that already in previous events in Cairo, but none got around to doing it. So, I’m just renewing the call to try to provide cyberaccess whenever we can for the audience. We complain all the time of the lack of media coverage of dissident news.. and while it’s true and has to do with how the mainstream media is structured in the first place, one way to counter that is take on the task ourselves: reporting the event, and spreading the word, image and audio to our increasing audience online. What we need is just a little cheap digital camera, a laptop, and wi-fi cyberaccess. Can the comrades at the Center for Socialist Studies for example try working on that for our future public meetings in the Center? Many of the talks and the discussions we organize, where labor leaders, community activists and others speak, need to be beamed somehow to the cyberspace.. By that we are spreading the word and the image to a wider audience, we can be inspiring others into action based on what they hear and see from the Egyptian experience, and in all cases this is the memory of the class that we are documenting. We need to get the words of Kamal el-Fayoumi, Tarek Amin, Kareem el-Beheiry, Gehad Taman, and all Ghazl el-Mahalla labor activists to a wider audience.

We need to familiarize the world with Mahalla in a much concrete way. What’s better to do? To just write about a 27,000-strong strike, or to write about it accompanied with pictures of the event, and see faces of their leaders, the men and women who did it, with videos of them recalling the events, talking about their personal experiences during that, how that shaped them.

I don’t think it’s nuclear physics to set it up, and I’m sure there are plenty of bloggers around in Cairo and Giza who can give us a hand with the technicalities of the process. Anyways, it’s just a thought.