Resources on the Revolutionary Socialists
Make sure you check out Mostafa Bassiouny’s article in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, on the fight of the Egyptian civil servants for free unions. A booklet on the Egyptian labor movement, coauthored by Mostafa and Omar Said, is available in English here.
The Daily News Egypt has a report about the Imbaba neighborhood in Giza:
Imbaba, an elaborate squatter area in Giza, Egypt, records 23,000 newborn babies annually, compared to the least fertile upscale Zamalek area with its 235 yearly births.
According to a recently published report by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAMPAS), Imbaba, which has a population of 1.1 million living on an area of 17,000 square km, contributes 1.1 percent to Egypt’s annual population rise.
Official statistics claim that Egypt’s population grows by 1.9 million every year, denoting a birth rate of 25.8 percent. The number is expected to go down to 1.2 in the next few years. The annual death rate of 6.3 percent (452,000 people) means that the overall natural population increase rate is at 19.5 percent.
Imbaba is also witnessing an anti-gentrification fight. The govt is planning to gentrify Ezbet Matar Imbaba (The neighborhoodof Imbaba’s Airport). The area, where the airport that stopped operating since 2001 exists, is surrounded by more than 35,100 inhabitants according to govt figures (I heard double and triple that estimate from others, but may be the other bigger numbers I heard include the neighboring Bashtil and Madinet el-Amal which are under threat too.). The authorities are working on “developing” the area, without any coordination with the locals, who are accusing the govt of planning in secrecy to demolish the neighborhood and turn it into an upscale housing integrated with Mohandessin. A solidarity committee of activists and local citizens in the neighborhood has been set up, trying to fight back.
The following statement has been distributed few hours ago by the Textile Workers’ League activists inside Ghazl el-Mahalla factories, during the (Saturday) third night shift. The statement, written in a satirical form, denounces corruption and the deterioration of medical services in the company’s hospital, and was signed by “The Mahalla Textile Slaughterhouse Workers’ League”.
Last Wednesday the League also distributed a statement, regarding the workers’ annual profit shares.
