Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a number of presentations on the recent events in the Middle East with the participation of some of the activists who were involved in the Tunisian and Egyptian popular uprisings. It has been inspiring to meet these people who have put their lives on the line for freedom. The three I've gone to have all been at MIT but there have been others at Harvard and I'm sure that there will be more to come. The seeds planted in the Arab Spring have just sprouted. The harvest won't come for a while.
MIT
4/29/11
A conversation with the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, Ahmed Maher and Waleed Rashed
Ahmed Maher, co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, is a civil engineer and a prominent participant in the anti-Mubarak demonstrations in Egypt in 2011. Maher is now one of Egypt's best known youth activists, leading politically mobilized young Egyptians to develop their political consciousness through the skillful deployment of new technologies and social networking platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.
Waleed Rashed, co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, has a degree in commerce and is continuing his studies in political science. He is the spokesperson for the April 6 Movement and the organizer of the April 6, 2008, Youth Movement protest in Alexandria where he and 14 members of the movement were arrested. He has traveled to Algeria, UAE, Turkey, Bahrain, Qatar and Lebanon as a member of the Kafaya movement, aka the Egyptian Movement for Change.
Waleed Rashed: "Luther Martin King" and Rosa Parks were his teachers. Call for general strike went out on Facebook. Learned from Serbia's Otpor and communicated with some of those who made the October, 2000 overthrow of Milosevic successful.
Ahmed Maher: Youth for Change started in 2005, 2006 hundreds arrested in around campaign for independent judiciary, used forums then blogs but street action stopped, 2007 lots of strikes and attempts at coordination, general strike called for April 6, 2008 through yahoogroups, SMS, and Facebook. In 10 days 70,000 members for Facebook page. Studied Serbia's Otpor, 3 years of members being coerced, losing jobs, being arrested. They capitalized peacefully on these incidents. Developed their own tactics and decentralized organizations which were networked together. Revolution definitely not over. Maher himself was arrested and tortured after 2007.
Waleed: Create your own media. Electronic media was useful but taxi drivers spread the message as well.
Maher: All foreign governments were unsupportive. People to people revolution against all governments so we can speak together directly. Movies like "Battle in Seattle" taught them how to use vinegar to wash away teargas, "V for Vendetta" taught them the power of setting a certain date. Not political power but freedom and social power. US academics refused to help. People revolution not Internet revolution.
A representative of Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institute (http://www.aeinstein.org/) was in the audience and passed a note to the moderator denying that Sharp ever refused to help the Egyptian movement. I asked about the US military support for Otpor through Colonel Robert Helvey (whose "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict" is available at http://www.aeinstein.org/...) and whether that bothered them. Maher answered that they were ready to use anything and everything if it served their purposes. I talked privately with Rashed about non-violent economics and have since sent him the links to all my notes on Gandhian economics.
I was very favorably impressed by these young men (Maher has just turned 30 and Rashed is 24). They seem to be very realistic about the task they have taken on and are in it for the long haul. They are explicit about knowing that getting rid of Mubarak is only one step on a historic journey. They obviously learn from everybody and everything they can and are talking with people all over the world who are looking to them for guidance and offering them support. They made it very clear that Tahrir Square didn't happen out of thin air. There were many years of work and many people who sacrificed their lives to make it possible.
MIT
5/4/11
Internet and Political Change in the Middle East
Ethan Zuckerman, Senior Researcher, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University.
Dr Marlyn Tadros, Executive Director, Virtual Activism, and Visiting Scholar, Northeastern University (http://www.virtualactivism.org/)
Speakers from Cairo:
Mr. Abdullah Helmey, Member, RYU* Executive Office Bureau; representative, Reform and Development Party
Dr. Rana Farouk, Media Officer & Member, RYU Executive Office Bureau
Mohamed Salem, Blogger
Ethan: Tunisia social media brought protests to the world. Egypt has an internet penetration 20% (2 million Facebook users in Tunisia). Al Jazeera cannot be underestimated. Social media allowed people to rehearse their acitivites, build unity. Starts with free and open media. Tunisia used filtering to try to control the message, Egypt turned the Net off, Bahrain is using pro-government propaganda in an infowar. US companies do the filtering and help with the censorship. Egypt was a revolution against corruption.
Cairo participated through a video link from the American University there. Everybody in Cairo spoke fluent English and, at one point, rebelled against the lack of equal time for their side of the conversation. Again, impressive and knowledgeable people who seem to be realistic about what they have taken on.
MIT
5/5/11
Civic Disobedience
Ethan Zuckerman (Moderator), Co-founder of Global Voices Online; Visiting Scientist at the Center for Future Civic Media (http://globalvoicesonline.org)
Clay Shirky, Writer, consultant, and Associate Professor at NYU in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (http://www.shirky.com/)
Zeynep Tufekci, Writer, journalist, and Assistant Professor at University of Maryland Baltimore County exploring how technology and society co-evolve (http://technosociology.org/)
Sami ben Gharbia, Tunisian human rights activist and director of Global Voices Advocacy (http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/)
Sami ben Gharbia: Tunisia blocked video sharing websites starting in 2008 as well as blogs, websites and twitter accounts. Facebook was not blocked, forced to unblock it when they tried blocking it for 10 days in 2009. Battle against censorship united opposition. Egyptian blogosphere was politicized from 2002.
Zeynep Tufekci: Social media changes the shape, structure of the network and spped of transmission, reshapes the public sphere and allows for information cascades. Separation between the literate and vernacular cultures in the Middle East somewhat bridged by social media. Epidemiology - speed of transmission, recovery, and shape of network - determine whether quarantine (or censorship) will work. Tunisia has been trying to revolt at least since 2000. (A version of her slides are at http://technosociology.org/...)
Sami: Earlier protests were local and even national protests were for parochial not universal demands.
Clay: Humans can make each other susceptible. Governments aren't afraid of individuals but of synchronized groups. People come out to the streets only after a long process. Media synchronizes opinion, mobilizes actions, and documents results. China took "Egypt" out of trending results so people could write about it but didn't know otherss were too. Sami's essay "Internet Freedom Fallacy and the Arab Digital Activism" from September 17, 2010 (http://samibengharbia.com/...) is very useful, even though it spanks both Shirky and Zuckerman in some respects. US overestimates access to info over access to each other. Outbound connectivity more important than inbound info; more important to get cell phone video on the street out to Al Jazeera than getting CNN (or other Western media) coverage out to the rest of the world.
Clay: Paul Ford 'The Web Is a Customer Service Medium or Why Wasn't I Consulted" (http://www.ftrain.com/...)
Sami: Arab Spring is a revolution to support the promise of freedom in their own Constitutions and nations, not to make fundamental changes in governmental structure.
Zeynep: An open network allows for quick establishment of hierarchy (the long tail theory with few loud voices with many followers and many soft voices with few followers)
Clay: Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust (The Seeley Lectures) by Pierre Rosanvallon and Arthur Goldhammer
Explicitly political media are easier to block by governments and don't reach the uncommitted and less political masses.