Cairo: View from the Street

10 A.M. FRIDAY, CAIRO TIME

Everything looks different in the morning … or does it? In Cairo, things look even more uncertain and shaky than they did yesterday. Yesterday strikes throughout Egypt took place, with professional and lay workers demanding higher pay or they would join the protests.

Lawyers in black robes had surrounded Mubarac’s former home, thundering ”God Is Great.” Bus drivers and transport workers locked buses in garages and refused to work, demanding higher pay. Other Egyptian workers gathered at the parliament buildings, preventing cabinet members from entering. Others conducted day strikes, including telecommunications, petroleum, railway, and steel workers.

Yesterday rumors circulated that the prime minister was stepping down. When that did not happen, feelings of betrayal, anger, and confusion surfaced. This morning as sounds of Muslim prayers rose into the air, new resolutions were falling into the streets.

In the early hours of the morning, after protesters realized there had been only a shift of power while the regime remained, with vague answers regarding amending the constitution, in anger Egyptians took to the streets, walking to the presidential palace and the state TV station to demand the president resign. Both buildings are surrounded with armed guards and barbed wire, which made it impossible for the protestors to enter either building, according to news reports. But they did not leave.

By early afternoon, in the minutes following Muslim prayers, crowds gathered in normally quiet neighborhoods, with shouts for justice and the fall of the regime. Quiet streets became crowded as people walked toward main streets to get to the square. Today workers who struck across Egypt yesterday announced they have formally joined the demonstration.

Today the demonstrations are no longer the voice of the young and idealistic; today that voice has become the voice of the young, the old, the poor, the middle class, professionals, and laborers. Today it is the voice resonating from all of Egypt’s people.

10 P.M. FRIDAY, CAIRO TIME

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

What a difference a day makes ….For Egypt it has meant the fall of a regime the people rejected and demanded come to an end with mass demonstrations, deaths, injuries, and imprisonment. They would not back down. “No” was not only unacceptable--it was the wrong answer.

They would stay in the square, willing to die for freedom rather than accept cosmetic changes, instead of real democracy. The workers of Egypt had had enough, the people of Egypt had had enough. It was time for better wages, better working conditions, a better way of life, an end to abject poverty, solutions for high unemployment. It was time for an end to secret police, to fear, intimidation, and restricted speech.

Tonight the mood is not only peaceful, it is exuberant, joyful, celebratory: dancing, fire throwers, firecrackers, cheers, yells, and joy in the air. Egypt is finally free.

The people have put an end to Pharoahism, to kingship, to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. They see an end to irresponsible, self-serving government, and the start of a journey to freedom. Hope, determination, refusal to stand down, power of the people: these are what real freedom is made of. One can only hope what tomorrow will bring.

Rosa Ruella is a current resident of Cairo and a previous contributor to Labor Notes on the auto industry.