Egyptians: Authors of Their Own Destiny

When violence was consuming Kenya in early 2008, I posted a question on this blog: "Is it so hard to organize people on a mass level to produce positive change?" After yesterday's amazing scenes from Tahrir Square, let no one ever wonder about this again.

The bravery that the Egyptian people have shown the world over the past three weeks has been extraordinary. Like other great nonviolent activists before them, they assembled defiantly and steadfastly until their previously unthinkable demands were met. The backlash of the Mubarak regime, particularly on the night of February 2, paralleled similar thuggish responses by repressive governments throughout history, including the British Raj in India and the American government (especially local law enforcement) during the civil rights movement.

However, as Gandhi and King would have urged, the Egyptian people did not turn to violence. They did not meet hate with hate, but instead with love and moral force. This love of God, family, community, dignity and freedom reached its ultimate expression in the celebrations that erupted the moment after Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak was stepping down. As tens of thousands cheered, danced, cried and waved Egyptian flags, thousands more bowed down in unison and pressed their foreheads to the 18 day-old battleground the people had so bravely occupied.

As I watched the live video from Al Jazeera on my laptop here in London, I deciphered the word 'rais' (the word for 'president' in Swahili) in Suleiman's announcement, and thought about the impact that cultures, and people, have on one another. Swahili was born of the meeting of Arabs and Bantus, and so the language, beliefs and customs of East Africa are flavored with Arabic. Now the wave of protests that began in Tunisia and spread to Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, has dethroned a modern-day pharaoh, a dictator no one thought assailable. How was this possible, especially without a leader to unify the movement? Consider the power of modern communications technology; cell phones, satellite TV and the internet have been crucial in organizing and fueling this revolution. What impact will this have on the rest of the Arab world? The rest of Africa? World history?

My small contribution is to write down my thoughts and click 'publish.' Am I an author? No. Does my voice matter? Yes. This will be one of Egypt's lasting lessons to the world. For the past 30 years, ordinary Egyptians were told that their voices didn't matter, or worse - that their voices could get them killed. Now, those voices have proven more powerful than Hosni Mubarak, his billions of US dollars, and his white-knuckled grip on his people's freedom.

A Curiously Casual Handover

Great Britain was surprised this evening by Gordon Brown's sooner-than-expected resignation, delivered at a lectern hastily placed outside the front door of 10 Downing Street at about 7:30pm local time. Helicopter shots showed the magnificent Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey gleaming in the late sun, the Thames sparkling beneath them, and then tracked Mr. Brown's black Jaguar as he made the short drive to Buckingham Palace to formally resign and recommend that the Queen ask David Cameron to form a new government.

BBC commentators remarked on the wondrous spectacle of the peaceful transfer of power, which is immediate here - no transition period like in the US. David Cameron is now the 12th Prime Minister of the Queen's reign, but that didn't keep his silver Jaguar from getting stuck in traffic on its way to Buckingham Palace! He was stopped next to a red double-decker bus (the #91, headed for our neighborhood!) and was immediately set upon by 'commoners' who came right up to the window of the car to wave and take pictures.

I was shocked, as this would never have happened even in pre-9/11 America, because 1) we would have had a motorcade of siren-blaring cops to clear the way, and 2) the secret service would have ensured that no one got within 100 yards of the new leader. Upon reflection, especially considering that London has seen its share of terrorism, I find it charming that Britain chooses to treat its leaders just like anyone else.

As Mr. Cameron arrived at the royal palace, it was noted that the two Queen's Guards posted outside did not salute his vehicle, whereas they had saluted Mr. Brown's as it left. However, their salute on his way out after a 20-minute audience with the Queen confirmed that he had indeed been confirmed as the new PM. The official announcement was that the agreement had been reached with a 'kissing of hands,' a point that was hotly debated by the BBC. It turns out that this is simply a reference to an ancient custom, and that the Queen and Mr. Cameron did not actually kiss each other's hands.

And so dawns a new political era in Great Britain, not with a bang but a whisper.

The Black Tea Party & White Privilege

I haven't written a great deal about politics on this blog, but I am becoming more and more upset by the virulent attitudes and actions of so many white Americans towards President Obama and the government. I'll let Tim Wise's words do the talking here:

"Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis."

Obama: The Reaction in Tanzania

Living without a television for 15 months has been wonderful in so many ways, but on election night, what we wanted more than anything else was to be back in America glued to the tube. Instead, we settled for text messages.

The first one came from Jake at 5:30am TZ time: “It looks like Obama is going to win:-)” An hour later from my parents: “Obama has won! McCain hasn’t conceded yet, but it’s a given – hallelujah!” An hour later, a text from our Ugandan friend Vinbro who has been talking excitedly with us about the election for over a year now: “McCain has thrown in the towel! Were you watching??”

I had to reply that no, we weren’t watching because we don’t have a TV. But just as we were beginning to feel like history was passing us by, Jake called from the early morning streets of Washington, DC. The noise was so loud I could barely hear his voice, but he was able to tell us that Obama had kicked McCain’s ass, won 330+ electoral votes and all the swing states, and everybody was celebrating his incredible victory and the end of Bush’s Reign of Terror.

Ecstatic, we donned the apparel that Jake had brought for us when he visited in June: a t-shirt with Obama’s face framed in a big O of stars and stripes, and an Obama pin. As we walked down the hill to work, people looked at the t-shirt smiling and we told them the great news.

At work, our colleagues were thrilled for us and we laughed at a catchy Obama reggae song playing on the local radio station. We brought them our copy of “Maisha ya Barack Obama,” (The Life of Barack Obama) written in Swahili by our Tanzanian journalist friend, Maggid Mjengwa, on sale for a dollar on street corners in Iringa. They were eager to read it and to be inspired, saying that Obama is a man who can make anybody – even the poor and the downtrodden – believe that they can succeed.

The texts and phone calls kept coming throughout the morning: Musa Kwanga, a local pastor who helped us bring SODIS to the villages; Zebedayo, a good friend and teacher at Idodi Secondary School; Bahati, another teacher who transferred to the southern city of Mbeya and we haven’t heard from in half a year; Sammy, a young artist from Dar Es Salaam who we met at the Bagamoyo Music Festival.

All of them called - some using their last shillings of credit - to say congratulations and to express their happiness for me, for Americans, for Tanzanians, for the world. It was deeply moving to receive these personal calls on behalf of Obama - it made me feel like he was a close family member - and to see how the force of Obama’s personality has reached as far as the remote villages of Iringa. Later, when we read his speech, we realized that the line, “to all those huddled around radios in forgotten corners of the world,” applies as much to Iringa as to anywhere else.


After work we stopped in at a local eatery and the waitress, who knows us well, complimented us on the t-shirt and asked if we could get her one. The shirt continued to draw attention, with people stopping us on the street to share their happiness and shake our hands. When we saw a man with his own Obama shirt, we had to stop and congratulate him. He had been waiting for this day to get a big silk screen of Obama with the slogan “Change We Need” on his second-hand shirt. Singing Obama’s praises, he pumped our hands vigorously and told us, “This is a man of unity. If they start fighting again in Kenya, Obama will come and end it and they will listen to him!”

We then headed down a side street because I wanted to see a man who, when repairing my flip-flops one day, talked earnestly with me about American politics as we sat in the hot sun and he threaded his needle through the thin rubber of my broken footwear.
He was sitting with a couple of friends on his shoemaker’s bench by the side of the road, and as we approached he said to them with pride, “I told you that my American friend would come see me today!”

A few meters down the road, a teenage girl came running up to us and said she just wanted to look at the Obama shirt. She then broke into a freestyle rap about Obama as she walked beside us and told us she was going to begin studying in our favorite Tanzanian town, Bagamoyo, at the College of Arts.

Our last stop in town before climbing the hill to go home was to see a family that owns a crafts store. The daughter, Upendo (the most common Tanzanian name for women, it means love) saw me and told a customer in the store, “This is the guy who told me that if Obama loses he won’t go back to America!” Upendo’s mother congratulated us warmly and said Obama gives her great hope because she feels that America will succeed now, and if America succeeds, then Tanzania will also succeed.

We never did find a working television; although we wandered around our neighborhood all evening knocking on friends’ doors, we were foiled by strong winds that scrambled satellite signals and then caused a total blackout. So we ended the day by listening to Obama’s speech on our neighbor’s laptop. They had downloaded it from the net, and as we sat there listening to his voice coming through the speakers, I imagined families huddled around the radio listening to FDR’s fireside chats during the Depression.

Now, 70 years later, a man whose name means blessing in Swahili, and who has eaten ugali with his grandmother in his ancestral African village, is the president-elect of the United States of America. Come on, say it with me, “Yes we can.”