Egyptian activists in second revolution

Egypt is having its second revolution in a year, I am told by one of my Egyptian friends in Cairo today. Over a million people are in Tahrir square and protesting in Alexandria today, calling for the ouster of military interim rule. At least 80 people have been killed as the protest, mostly non-violently, in just the past two days.
To watch events in Egypt streaming live right now,

Tomorrow, she and I will be co-facilitating a live video conference group of 9 university students from Egypt, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Europe and US, discussing how to better understand each other and events like this.

Voices from Egyptian Activists

While some protesters with Occupy Seattle this week are getting arrested or awakened by cops in the wee hours of the morning , no one is getting run down by a car. Not so in Egypt.

This week, the car carrying the Dean of Mansoura University in Egypt ran over 15 students who were protesting university policies. I found this out this morning while talking with Nihal, an activist from Egypt now working with the World Bank in Washington DC, as she told me of the shocking responses by some leading university officials to demands of Egyptian students seeking change. And yesterday, Sumyia, an activist teacher I spoke with through Skype video in Cairo, informed me that Muammar Gaddafi's death had just been officially confirmed, according to official sources in Egypt.

No longer are we confined to just reading or watching the news about events in other countries. We can easily now gather first-person, unfiltered news directly from those experiencing events in other countries.

I am currently interviewing activists in Egypt in preparation for a presentation for the Global Washington Annual Conference at the end of this month. I will be moderating a panel with two other international activists as we examine the effects of the Egyptian revolution on education and non-governmental organizations (NGO's) operating in Egypt.

Using tools like free Skype video calls, the Egyptian activists and educators are sharing very personal stories with us about what it is really like now in Egypt. Despite the rare but shocking violent responses Nihal reported, there is also a sense of determination by most activists I spoke with, indicating that "we won't turn back to how we were before". We will not only share these comments with the participants at this conference, but we will bring in some of these voices from the field directly to you through a live Skype video broadcast. I hope you will come, ask your own questions, and get answers directly from our Skype participants in Cairo. See you there!

What is behind the mask?

"Heart like rock?". This is the caption, my new friend, Huzaifa Hamid in Iraq tells me, for this photo above, taken by his brother at the protests this past week in Sulaymaniyeh. I visited this city last year, a city with a population about the size of Seattle, meeting with youth leaders there. The photo is startling to me for a couple reasons. First, it is of a young woman activist taking this brave, bold action, in a city where 4 young people were killed last week by soldiers. Most of the photos and videos we have seen so far from protests in most Middle East countries this week have been of young men. Second, it immediately reminded me of a famous image from our own anti-war and civil rights protests shown here.

More protests are planned for next week, calling for not so much an overthrow of the regime in Northern Iraq, but more focused on weeding out corruption in government, and an improved economy.

I was most struck by Huzaifa's empathy for the soldier. He writes;
"I think the soldiers themselves are very good persons and they do not wanna do violence but they take order from their boss from KDP or PUK (the ruling parties) that's why they are doing violence, and if they reject the order,they must quit their job and can not get money to keep their family a life."

To me this is most remarkable, this empathy for those with whom we often see as our enemy. Yet, this can be the most powerful part of non-violent resistance, this ability to keep one's own humanity in tact by remembering the humanity in others. When 4 people have just been slaughtered, this can seem to be an unimaginable, even abhorrent task.

Heart like a rock? My friend tells me the soldier is being challenged here to make a difficult choice. Accept the flower or risk a hardening heart.

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela all helped us to seek non-violent change, fueled by this ability to be our strongest by remembering the humanity in us all. It tests us on both sides of the gun.

Maybe it is too much to ask the soldiers to put down their guns at this moment. But I wonder if they could be asked to pull off their masks?

Gambling on our future

As events in the Middle East have unfolded this month, starting first in the streets of Tunisia, and this morning with the fall of the government in Jordan, I have been talking with activists around the world to get their take of the situation. Dramatic and surprising things are happening and I have been glued to the internet to understand it better. This is the new frontier for how we can get the news, not second-hand, but from direct sources. We no longer have to only rely on Walter Cronkite (my day) or John Stewart (my kids' new day), or Glen Beck (some of my blood relatives). Today, from Abdellah, my friend in Morocco, I learned that the streets in his country remain relatively quiet, but supportive of the street protests in Egypt. From Ali*, a youth activist from Gaza, I learn that Gaza youth are very active in support of the protests, and it could affect politics there, where both the local government (Hamas) and surrounding governments (Israel) remain hostile to freedoms of the citizens in Gaza. I talk via skype with activists in Lebanon, (who participated in running mock elections like the one pictured here) and learned that there is lots of talk among youth leaders there about these unfolding events and what it means for their own country.

This all helps start to paint the picture of the real situation. And, when I combine it with on the ground reports from CNN and trusted voices like Nicholas Kristoff who is talking with folks on the streets in Cairo, I begin to get a sense of what is really happening now.

But using that to predict what will happen next is tricky. Obama is trying to do the same thing, and I suspect he has just a few more direct sources than the rest of us. And even with that, it is hardly predictable. Will Mubarek resign (I think yes) but will the government that replaces him be less repressive and improve the social conditions in any significant way? Will Egypt become more hostile to the US? Will Yemen, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia follow in the Tunisian path and democracy and civil society grow in the region? If Martin Luther King is right, and "the Arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice", then this may happen. Over time. A long time.

My brother and I celebrated my birthday this weekend with 3 days of golf, a massage, and then a rare trip to the local casino for a game of roulette. I won big, taking home an extra $67, (which will go directly into that very large, and very deep black hole we call "Jenny's College Fund" ). Yet, as my financial wizard brother informed me, "the Arc of the roulette wheel is also long, but it bends very predictably towards the House".

The optimist in me wants to say that the organizing in the streets calling for improved social conditions and free expression that is spreading like wildfire now will result in improved living conditions for folks in several more countries in the decade ahead. And the optimist in me also wants to return to the Casino table, now that I am on a roll.

I hope Dr. King is right. I know my brother is right.


*(Actual names in this post not used to ensure confidentiality)

Combating Fear in clothes that fit.

“What should I wear if I do not have a long, loose dress? haha… that may sound trivial but I want to be respectful. Do you get my question?”

Now I generally do not wear dresses, but I did understand all too well her question she texted to me this morning. Molly, a 17 year old student and leader in Mercy Corps’ Global Citizen Corps, is getting ready to lead more than a dozen other students from her high school to a press conference and tour of a mosque in Seattle Washington today.

It’s September 11th, a day of remembrance, and one in which Molly and her group want to recognize as a day to build bridges to understanding as an antidote to fear and distrust.

I understand her question all too well because earlier this month I faced a similar dilemma.

I had been invited by Charlene Teters, a high school classmate, to come to her annual Pow Wow for her tribe, the Spokane Indians. I had connected with her at our 40th year class reunion last month. We didn’t know each other well in high school, but I did remember her brother, George quite well. He was the guy who beat me with a high degree of regularity in competitive wrestling throughout high school!

At the reunion, I learned that over the years Charlene had become a nationally prominent activist, leading to major policy changes so that today many sports teams no longer use Indians as mascots for their teams.

As I got ready that morning to pack and go to the Pow Wow I realized I had nothing to wear that would work.

I pulled out my one clean white t-shirt, with a Seattle Mariners emblem on the back (that seemed ok) but the logo on the front was of Alaska Airlines, with a Native face. I grabbed another t-shirt I had gotten at the Grand Canyon some years ago, and then noticed the image of Kokopelli, a fertility deity worshiped by some Native American tribes in the Southwest. Not ok?

I grew up in Spokane, a western town of sorts, so decided to grab my leather belt and leather hat I had gotten in Peru a few years back. Both hand-made. And both etched with what some believe to be religious animal symbols, called the Nazca Lines, from the ancient time of the Incas. Another commercial exploitation of Native culture?

My last option was to go a little fancier, and pull out my best western-looking shirt, a black, decorative Cowboy shirt. Eek! Now that would be a real poke in the eye.

We really know so little about each other. Maybe none of this would be offensive, I really don’t know. And I didn’t fully know what to expect at the Pow Wow, or, for that matter, what we will see when we go to the mosque today. I have traveled to 26 countries so far in my life, a good number of them in the middle east, and in all that time, I don’t think I have ever stepped foot in a mosque.

What one wears, or uses for a mascot, or burns, or makes a cartoon about, or builds near; these things can seem trivial to some, but to others are critically important. We don't really know why it is important unless we all learn a heck of a lot more about each other. And come to understand what we mean with our actions. For that, we need to step into each others' worlds.

Today is a day to take one more small step. Time to get ready.

Silverdale to Sulaymaniyah

“If you visit American city
You will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware,
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air”

I first heard this song by Tom Lehrer 30 years ago. Sometimes I think we have made great progress since then. Sometimes I do not. Recently I was torn between these two feelings in the space of an hour.

I headed out to Silverdale, Washington last week to see what a local Global Citizen Corps group was up to on this cold Sunday morning. I heard they were doing something about clean water and climate change, and I had a gift to bring them from their counterparts in Iraq.

As I waited in this lovely waterfront park, I gazed out to the windy sea and saw this surprising signage. Tom Lehrer’s song immediately revved up in my head. Just moments later, this song was interrupted and replaced by a loud and enthusiastic chanting coming from a crowd of 40 youth marching down the street.

They were marching the two miles from Island Lake to Puget Sound- from one polluted water hole to another, calling attention to World Water Day. And their efforts to raise money for purchasing incredibly low-cost water filters for families in Ethiopia.

They ended their march on top of a giant map of the world next to the sea, and stood in solidarity next to the eight countries where other Global Citizen Corps leaders were taking similar actions this week.

These young leaders all knew that if we do want to drink the water and breathe the air, it is going to take all of us across the globe, working together, to make it happen.

I offered them two gifts as we stood there on top of the world; a commemorative tea plate Iraqi youth asked me to bring to US youth leaders, and news that the Iraqi Global youth leaders had just planted 1300 trees and organized 2000 people to call attention to climate change.

I left the park a little chilled, but at least Tom Lehrer’s song was no longer rattling around in my head…

Voting in Iraq-an act of faith

The biggest issue that regularly confounds me each time I vote here in Seattle is finding a postage stamp. Despite this, I have become a strong believer in the mail-in ballot, mostly because I don't have to haul myself to the polls at 7am before I head off to work.

But, as I learned this week, voting in Iraq presents other challenges. I was talking yesterday on video Skype with my colleague, Mohammed, a Mercy Corps staffer for the Global Citizen Corps program about the recent Iraqi elections and wondering how it had gone. "Oh, it's gone quite well, very safe, only a few very small bombs went off".

Now I don't know about you, but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of safe "small bombs." Over 100 people were killed in these March elections in Iraq, so to me, it is a pretty big act of faith to march down to the polls, dip your finger in ink, and make your views known through the power of the ballot box.

But many, like Mercy Corps' Global Citizen Corps member Kardo (pictured) did. This desire we have to vote, to help shape the way we are governed, is very strong, it seems. And while I would hope I would do the same if I were in Kardo's shoes, I doubt I will ever get to the point of thinking of any bomb as "small".....