Saturday, December 17, 2011

From Tunis and Tahrir to Wall Street, and back again



Since Bouazizi's self-immolation dictators across the Arab world have been ousted, but is the old system still in place?

A GOOD ARTICLE
By Mark LeVine

Al-Jazeera

"....Six ingredients that have become paradigmatic in the Arab Spring were in place in Tunisia the fateful day of December 17 - a youthful population, an internet savvy, multi-lingual and cosmopolitan activist cadre, a working class that had already stood up to a bloody government crackdown, a religious movement with deep roots in society, a regime that had devolved from authoritarian to just plain mafia and a population that had lost all hope - and thus all fear.....

...But countries like Egypt, Bahrain or Yemen - the next stops on the Arab world's still largely unpaved revolutionary road - were, and remain, a different story.

These countries are far too central to US and Western strategic and economic interests in the region for the US to have supported a democratic transition that might upend existing relationships and policies. Thus, the Obama Administration's unwillingness even to utter the word "democracy" until Mubarak's departure was imminent, offer more than mild criticism of the brutal crackdown against Bahrain's pro-democracy protests or to support a transition in Yemen not orchestrated by the starkly anti-democratic Saudis....

A system that refuses to die

....Today, however, protesters are fighting against a system that refuses to die. Chants such as "The people want the downfall of the system" were perhaps overly optimistic back in January, but few people expected the system to prove quite so resilient - even as no one thought that less than a month after the fall of Mubarak Cairenes would be ordering pizza for protesters in Madison, Wisconsin whom they inspired.

And it is precisely the strange mix of global reach and local weakness that is the most important legacy of Sidi Bouzid and Tahrir Square one year after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze, starting the whole process in motion. The seemingly contradictory phenomena are in fact intimately related, and point to several lessons that are not lost on activists from Wall Street, Tahrir and beyond as the global movement for democracy and economic justice that began in North Africa continues to grow.

First, democracy is a means, not an end. Electoral democracy might well become institutionalised in Tunisia and Egypt, but that does not mean that the primary goals of the revolutions - "Bread, Freedom and Dignity" - will be achieved. Indeed, the US and Europe have only negative lessons to offer the Arab world, as our own system today is so dominated by money and power that inequality and corruption are reaching "third world" levels while elections offer almost no hope of real changes in policy.

In such an environment, large-scale grassroots activism of the sort that has defined the Arab Spring and now the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement are the sine qua non for successful systemic political and economic transformation.

Don't count out the liberals

Second, occupying public space is absolutely crucial to occupying public consciousness. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions only succeeded when people got off of Facebook and took to the streets in large enough numbers to prevent the army from using large-scale violence against them. Similarly, OWS was able to raise issues of social justice and growing inequality only because of the hundreds of occupations that mushroomed across America.

Yet such occupations are incredibly hard to sustain long-term. Arab and Western activists have to figure out a way to institutionalise their presence without having to spend the huge amount of energy and resources it takes to occupy public spaces.

In Egypt, the government continues to jail, torture and kill activists. While less overtly violent, the increasing militarisation of policing and the stifling civil disobedience are harbingers of a far less open and democratic public sphere than we have experienced in generations. Indeed, standing amidst the violence in Tahrir reading tweets from Oakland and other cities and universities where police were forcefully dispersing protesters literally made my head spin.

Finally, liberals might have lost the elections, but don't count out the Left. Commentators have focused on religious movements and parties but the fact is that in Egypt it was the various socialist movements which did the crucial organising that enabled the revolution in February. Lenin and Trotsky played an equally, if not more important, role to non-violent resistance guru Gene Sharp in shaping the strategies of protest deployed by revolutionaries.

In fact, while liberal Egyptians look aghast at the rise of the Islamists, socialist and labour activists are setting about the hard work of building a base among the poor and working class. Their numbers are growing and include many religious activists who have been turned off by the Brotherhood's easy embrace of the corrupt and violent system that only recently oppressed them. A similar trend is apparent in Tunisia.

Ultimately, however, no matter how well organised the emerging democracy and justice movement become, transforming a global system that has taken decades and even centuries to evolve is a herculean task....."

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