On Thursday this week I introduced the assignment sheet for the Global Understanding Workshop and we discussed the relationship between forms of mass media and revolutions.
We’ll continue with many of those ideas on Tuesday next week when we discuss this Wall Street Journal article on how the young activists who started the Tahrir uprising pulled it off. [Bad news: that article is now behind a paywall. The gist of it is that the activists used a subterfuge to disperse State Security forces to something like twelve mosques around the city on Friday, January 25, while a couple of activists went to a tightly packed working-class neighborhood and sparked a spontaneous rally there. They then started marching toward Tahrir Square picking up enough people along the way to create a critical mass of bodies. This mass was too large for the dispersed Security forces to immobilize, so they marched into the square and started their sit-in.] We’ll also take a look at this article from Jadaliyya about the battle of Mohammed Mahmoud Street, just off Tahrir Square in Central Cairo. We’ll continue watching The Square, leaving the last bit of it for Thursday next week when we’ll take a lot more time to discuss your thoughts on it and the Egyptian revolution.
Here’s an optional video that includes the banner image I used on our class blog: