Celebrating the Anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution

Protestors in Tahrir Square, Cairo, after Mubarak’s resignation on Feb 11, 2011. Source: Jonathan Rashad (CC-BY 2.0)

Fourteen years ago, protests against police brutality rapidly spread across Egypt and turned into a revolution. At the time, in early 2011, Egypt was a police state under the control of dictator Hosni Mubarak. His forces were widely known to not only regularly beat and detain people to maintain control, but they also fixed elections, extorted local taxi drivers and shopkeepers, and crushed labor disputes. Small, local protests against the police and Mubarak were common, but activists and organizers decided to call for a national unified “day of rage” on January 25. This date was Mubarak’s new holiday in honor of the police forces, when many people would have the day off from work and school.

Ordinary Egyptians were furious at Mubarak and the police state, and they were electrified by the recent revolution in nearby Tunisia. On the Day of Rage, many thousands of people joined the demonstrations in neighborhoods throughout Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, and many other cities. Though these marches often began peacefully, they suffered brutal and sometimes deadly attacks from police and were forced to engage in street fighting. The demonstrations included people of all types, including youth and students, textile workers and other industrial laborers, government workers, lawyers’ organizations, community groups from poor neighborhoods, and even soccer fan clubs. People shouted that they wanted “Bread, freedom, social justice!”, and borrowed the chant from the revolutionaries in Tunisia: “The people want to overthrow the regime!”

News of the violent police response awakened and motivated more of the masses over the next few days. The crowds grew larger and larger, eventually reaching millions. People stormed into and burned down police stations and the offices of Mubarak’s political party, and workers in many industries went on strike. Security forces desperately fought to prevent a unified demonstration in Cairo’s central Tahrir square, but on January 28, marches from the east and west sides of the city successfully battled to overcome the police, allowing the crowds to merge and establish Tahrir Square as the revolution’s epicenter.

For 18 days, Tahrir Square was maintained as a revolutionary tent city, where people participated in a temporary but new way of living. They cooked and ate in communal kitchens, established makeshift clinics to offer free medical care, and distributed blankets on cold nights. They delivered political speeches, debated the future of Egypt, and hung revolutionary banners around the square. A common sentiment in the square was that, “This is the kind of society I want to live in. Tahrir brings out the best in every Egyptian.” Along with creating this sense of communal democracy, people in Tahrir Square were also forced to defend themselves, fighting fiercely against the police and government thugs who aimed to crush the revolution.

The people’s fight against Mubarak continued for just a few weeks, and was so powerful that he was forced to resign on February 11. But it soon became clear that the radical energy that had prevailed in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt did not guarantee a lasting change in society. Mubarak’s resignation resulted in temporary military rule, followed by a short-lived presidency, which then gave way to the current authoritarian leadership of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Despite its failure to produce long-lasting change, the January 25 Revolution, as it has become known, offers a glimpse at the potential for a revolutionary spirit to rapidly spread across society and bring an end to systems that can seem permanent. No one had predicted January 25. In 2009, a political scientist and Mubarak supporter said that, “Widespread, politically motivated unrest was unlikely because it was not part of the ‘Egyptian mentality,’” and other academics agreed that “Egyptians rarely explode.”

The revolutionaries themselves were just as surprised when Egyptians did indeed explode. One participant in the demonstrations told a journalist: “The miracle of the Egyptian revolution, was that we all decided simply to walk in the streets. It was such an ordinary thing to do, but when millions of us did it, it was extraordinary.”

Although the Egyptian revolution was unexpected to many, it did not come out of nowhere. Organizers and activists across the country had been working for years to fight back against poverty, exploitation at workplaces, and police and government repression. During the 2000s, the frequency and size of workers’ strikes increased, along with protests based on demands for a minimum wage, solidarity with Palestinians, and the rights of minority groups in Egypt. People learned how to organize themselves and fight for a cause. The government desperately fought to keep these struggles isolated, but the particular energy of 2011 allowed them to come together and grow into the January 25 Revolution.

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