Tag: workers
The Revolution will be Flickrized
I’ll go back again to the issue of photography…
I gave recently some talks about the Mahalla Uprising, among labor and progressive circles in the Bay Area, as part of the effort (tremendously helped by friends in California and NYC I’m grateful for) to spread the word about what’s going on back in Egypt among the activist circles here. I always request from the organizers of the event to bring a projector if possible, so as to play a slideshow of pix from the Mahalla Uprising as well as other photos of demos and strikes in Egypt to accompany my presentation. Why? Because again spreading the image I believe is just as important as spreading the word.
I may sound like a broken record since I already posted few times about this before, but I’ll keep stressing it: Whatever event you are holding, whatever protest you are staging, please take a digital camera with you and snap a pic or two of the event. (If you can take videos too that would be even greater). It’s important for other people around the world to “see” what you are doing with their own eyes, instead of just “hearing” or “reading” about it. People need to see with their own eyes both police brutality and social resistance.
Struggles spread by the domino effect, as Mahalla proved since December 2006, and as the Palestinian intifada proved in 2000. When a revolution (or what the Imperialists and the Arab regimes call “instability”) breaks out in one country, it hardly stays within its boundaries–and surely the coming Egyptian revolution won’t defy what has almost become a natural law in politics as proven in every single uprising in the last century. Spreading the image contributes tremendously as a catalyst in this process. A victory for the workers in one sector will inspire others within the same sector and outside to follow suit. Showing photos and videos of those victories helps in getting the message across to the workers: “They have done it over there. You can do it over here!”
Spending hours trying to convince someone with the ability of workers to self organize and bring about a smashing defeat against the state if they act collectively, could just be narrowed down to few minutes if they saw for example Nasser Nouri’s photos of the Mahalla Dec 2006 strike.
You can talk for hours about the revolutionary potential of the masses in the urban towns to overthrow their shackles of fear and confront the Mubarak’s dictatorship at times of rising social struggle, without the help of the American tanks… or you can simply show whoever you are talking with these photos from Mahalla taken last April.
Revolutionary activists involved in consciousness raising efforts, propaganda or agitation among the workers anywhere HAVE to do their best to visualize what they are talking about or arguing for. At the same time, there is an immense need for these images to reach millions of other workers and activists around the world. That could be very inspiring for the latter, as well as a catalyst to generate more support for those facing the onslaught.
If you have photos of demos, strikes, factory occupations, or whatever theme that is directly related to the social struggle in your country, please go ahead and upload them online. Don’t leave them on your hard drive.
This is the memory of the class, and we shouldn’t lose it coz the ruling classes always do their best to distort or delete it.
Egyptian Strikes: More than bread and butter
My feature on the labor movement, in the British Socialist Review, is now available online:
The mass demonstrations and strikes that have swept Egypt over the last year have transformed the opposition movement. For decades Egyptians lived in fear of the regime – opposition activists were rounded up, imprisoned and tortured, and strikers gunned down – now this has changed. The two days of rioting in the textile mill town of Mahalla al-Kubra recently have shaken the regime. The Mahalla intifada – as it is now called – is part of a wider phenomenon engulfing the country. We are living in an era of growing militancy.
Today’s protests have their roots in the movement in solidarity with the second Palestinian Intifada that erupted in 2000. This triggered the biggest demonstrations in the capital, Cairo, and nationally, since the 1977 bread riots. That rebellion was brutally crushed, but its shadow continues to haunt the US backed regime of Hosni Mubarak. Young students were at the heart of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations. One of the slogans raised during the period was “The road to Jerusalem passes through Cairo.” These protests spilled over into protests against the regime. People started to ask, “Why is our government not doing enough to help Palestinians? Why is the regime supplying energy to Israel?” (Egypt is Israel’s main gas supplier.)
These small protests then developed into an anti Iraq war movement that resulted in two days of mass protests of up to 50,000 in Cairo during 2003. Protesters burned pictures of Mubarak alongside those of Western flags. The government responded with mass arrests. The anti-war protests broke the taboo surrounding criticisms of the regime. Workers were suffering in the factories, but also seeing television pictures of the protests in downtown Cairo. This has had a revolutionising impact on people’s psyche and given them more confidence to move later.
Everything changed on 7 December 2006. Egypt’s prime minister Ahmad Nazif – a neoliberal and big supporter of structural adjustment programmes – promised public sector workers a bonus to cover rising prices of basic commodities. When the government stalled payment of these bonuses, workers in Mahalla struck for three days demanding he make good his promise. The majority of garment workers in the company are women. They shamed the men into action and together they occupied the factory. The police attempted to put the factory under siege, but failed to break the strike. The victory in Mahalla triggered the biggest and most sustained wave of strikes in Egypt since the end of the Second World War. Mahalla always sets the tone for working class politics in Egypt. If Mahalla is on the rise the labor movement will be on the rise. If it loses this means a downturn in the movement.
And here’s a link to another feature in the US International Socialist Review. Spread the word (and the image) shabab.