Originally published on the CGS blog on June 6, 2013.
A full two and a half years after the start of the Arab Spring, it seems that things are not as well off as would have been hoped. The deluge of democratic populism that flooded Tahrir Square in 2011 has given way to a depressed apathy (at best) and a simmering anger (at worst) for President Mohamed Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party government. According to a Pew Research Center study from mid-May, Egyptians are “increasingly glum,” with 62% dissatisfied with the state of the country (only 7 percentage points below pre-revolution 2010), and only a lukewarm 39% think the country is better of post-Mubarak. Further, 56% of Egyptians interviewed feel dissatisfied with the way democracy has been working in the country. Perhaps, though, this might change.
Recently, a new grassroots movement has sprung up in Egypt: the Tamarod Campaign. Tamarod, Arabic for “rebellion,” has taken root in the foundation of Egypt’s centrist and liberal populace, with the sole goal of ousting Morsi and holding new democratic elections. As of the end of May, the campaign has picked up more than 7 million signatures from around Egypt, approximately 8% of Egypt’s population of 85 million. The movement, which began symbolically in Tahrir Square, hopes to collect and deliver 15 million signatures by June 30th, the day President Morsi was sworn in.
Tamarod has not gone unnoticed by both sides of Egypt’s political divide. Opposition leader and initial presidential contender Mohamed ElBaradei met with members of the movement, and expressed his “‘strong admiration for the campaign'” and his belief that it was “an integral part of the national opposition” to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. ElBaradei has mirrored Tamarod’s call for elections, saying that Morsi has lost the trust of both the opposition and the Egyptian people. Conversely, proponents of the Morsi government have been quick to belittle the movement, either denigrating it as a precipitously unstable alliance or flippantly dismissing it as something that surfaced from nowhere and is going nowhere, as the government-owned Al Ahram did. The Morsi government itself has also flexed its muscles in response to the rise of Tamarod, referring a doctor to the prosecutor’s office for campaigning for the movement, having four members of the campaign detained by Homeland Security, and ransacking a Tamarod-allied office. One supporter of the government went even so far as to pursue legal action against the entirety of Tamarod and its allies, filing a report with the Supreme State Security Prosecution, accusing Tamarod of “attempting to overthrow the regime.” Perhaps it’s the English-Arabic divide, but when you use the word “regime” while attempting to quash claims of governmental tyranny, you’re not really helping yourself out.
The success of the movement, much like the success of Arab Spring, has been propelled by social networking sites and technology. Instagram is filled with sepia-tone pictures relating to the campaign, twitter is afire with hashtagged tweets of support, and the movement’s Facebook page climbs in likes every day, likely having already surpassed today’s 269,000 likes.
But, for the most part, outside of Egyptian and Middle East-focused news outlets, the Tamarod Movement is not news. Only nine months after the beginning of Egypt’s revolution, the New York Post, long-lauded for its ardently pursued quality journalism (see: sarcasm),was already writing the revolution’s obituary, obnoxiously asserting that the concept of democracy was incapable of permeating the Arab bubble. The Post is not alone in its derision for the Arab Spring and the events that followed; conservative figures were quick to retrospectively condemn Tahrir as a liberal machination to install an “Obama acolyte” that failed, or a mistake that left us “worse off” without Mubarak, or simply an opportunity to express their Islamophobia. As many Americans are wont to do, the aforementioned individuals have only been able to view the Arab Spring and the Egyptian revolution in the context of and with regard to America; the needs and desires of Egyptians, for example, are completely ignored, because who better to pass judgment on the state of the revolution than the country who worked closely with the tyrant that the revolution toppled? For a number of conservatives, it’s difficult to imagine a successful democratic revolution that the United States didn’t have a hand in, so any opportunity to criticize the fruits of the Arab Spring is quickly taken.
This mindset is something that is truly telling about Americans’ point of view. Domestically, we see and acknowledge the presence of grassroots movements everywhere: the Occupy Movement, the Tea Party, President Obama’s election and reelection campaigns. But we’re hesitant to similarly label comparable movements abroad; instead of calling them grassroots movements or campaigns, they’re riots, uprisings, and rebellions. Srilatha Batliwala, an Indian feminist and visiting fellow at Harvard, characterized grassroots movements as “movements of, for, and by people most directly affected by the consequences of public policies.” What, then, is so wrong with using this designation? Third world, especially Middle Eastern, civilian grass roots demonstrations are often quick to be tagged by the more conservative wing of Western media as somehow violent or destructive. By reducing true populist aspirations for recognition to little more than attention-seeking antics, we cheapen our own revolutionary past.
But the proof is in the pudding. No matter what the talking heads say, June 30th will hopefully be the “watershed in the history of the Egyptian revolution.” As Americans, who sometimes take their freedom for granted, we must voice our support for this movement. The American and world media were alight with eagerness at the beginning of the Arab Spring, and we must bring back this fire for Egypt’s Arab Spring 2.0. The Tamarod Movement is a grassroots campaign that wants to “achieve a society of dignity, justice and freedom.” These are goals that the American public can and should sympathize with. We should not be blasé about the movement’s path, and we should do all we can to show our support. This country was founded by a scrappy grassroots movement of concerned citizens, and who are we to deny another such movement its legitimacy?
