Tag: strikes

Mahalla testimony

Posted on By 3arabawy

A Mahalla labor organizer involved in the April 6 Uprising…

None of us expected the events to explode in such manner on 6 April. What we were hoping for at best was to repeat what happened on 17 February on a larger scale. May be instead of 20,000, we’ll get double that.

After the round up of the (Textile Workers’ League) leaders and the occupation of the factory, all of us thought the day was over. But the citizens outside the factory were waiting. They were the real heroes of the day. They all saw what we did on 17 February. They felt what we were talking about. They were our families at the end of the day, not strangers. From the early morning many were roaming outside the company gates and waiting for us to do something. They were waiting for the strike. When the strike was aborted, they took the initiative.

It’s wrong to ignore the direct link between 17 February ‘organized’ demonstration and the April 6 ‘spontaneous’ uprising. The first was a dress rehearsal for the latter, and helped hype up the morale of the citizens in the town. If the factory had gone on strike, the events would have taken a different direction of course.

There’s anger towards the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian for not doing anything for the people in Mahalla. The group itself refused to support the strike and did not mobilize its supporters on that day to the streets… But at the same time, some young Muslim Brotherhood students from Mahalla and Tanta disobeyed their organizational orders the joined the protests on occasions… Yes, I assure you, they were acting without the consent of their leadership.

Mahalla testimony

Posted on By 3arabawy

Testimony from a labor organizer, involved in Mahalla’s 6 April Uprising…

The factory floor in the days preceding the 6th of April was a battleground between the Textile Workers’ League activists who were agitating for the strike on the one hand, and the security and Attar’s group on the other. Every day, in the week before the strike, at least four statements would appear and each distributed in thousands among the workers in the factory… There were two camps as I said: The (Textile Workers’) League’s activists and the others who belonged to Attar, Habib and their group. Statements would appear in the factory signed by “Al-3ommal el-Shorafaa” (The Honorable Workers)… These would be mainly Attar’s and Habib’s… Then you get another statement by “Al-3ommal al-Ahrar” (The Free Workers).. These were the security.. One statement at least, signed by the “Nasserist Workers” appeared and was distributed… More statements appeared in other names I can’t even remember. All these (statements) I mentioned would be agitating against the strike and accusing the “communists” and “trouble makers” of having “hidden agendas”… You add to that of course the statements that were coming from the management itself under its name that was threatening the workers if they joined the strike. Countering that there were thousands of leaflets agitating for the strike that were circulated by the Textile Workers’ League. But, with the help of security, activists, like Attar and Habib, were allowed to tour the different sections of the factory to persuade the workers not to join the strike, while the League’s workers were under tight monitoring in their sections and were not allowed access to the rest of the factory. They (Attar and Habib) were subject to slurs from the workers on several occasions. But when you get these big number of statements and counter-statements circulating, this created some level of general confusion in the factory whether there will be a strike or not. Some statements said the strike was canceled, while other statements said it was still going ahead…. The mood was very angry in the factory, especially in the garments section among the women, and I say the strike could still have gone through if the factory hadn’t been occupied by the security.