Witnessing History?Egypt's Leaderless Democratic Revolution

Here we sit in an absolute monarchy (Qatar), a country which has a constitution that allows for Qatari nationals to vote (men and women) and allows women to run for public office.  A constitution which establishes the Majlis al Shura--a parliament with 30 members elected by popular vote and 15 members appointed by the Emir. A constitution which was ratified in 2003 or 2004 (too lazy to go look it up).  Seven years later...no parliament yet.  There have been a couple of elections for municipal positions, but no parliament.  One huge difference between Qatar and Egypt is population: 1.7 million people live in Qatar, but only about 250,000 of those are Qatari nationals (citizens who can vote).  The rest of us are immigrant workers who could be asked to go home.

Most Qataris get all sorts of benefits from the state, via petroleum revenues--it's a "welfare state."  I'm not complaining because my salary is paid by these same revenues.  Regardless, the bottom line is that the people of Egypt have been oppressed by a corrupt government and have suffered under 20-25% unemployment (according to Al Jazeera...which, by the way, was the first free media established in the Middle East, established by the Emir of Qatar), escalating food prices, and other hardships.  So Qataris, from my own informal conversations mainly with students of ~20 years old on average, are a little frustrated by the continued wait for the parliament, but while Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, and Morocco...maybe even Libya?...have rumblings or revolutions, Qatar remains stable and, for once, lucky to be surrounded/buffered by the stable nation of Saudi Arabia.

But as I take a graduate course in "personal agency" (the power of the individual to affect change or use the power of expression) and as I look out onto my own classrooms of Arabic (and several Egyptian) students, this is giving me a lot to ponder.  According to articles that are published in all sorts of places, this Egyptian revolution was not started by a particular person.  It was a collective effort organized and fed via...Facebook and Twitter.  It's a "young generation's revolution" fed by connections and by shared frustration over the oppressive government.

Here's a great article on how social networking and an anonymous user found power in the story of a young man in Alexandria beat to death by the police and in the tools of Web 2.0: "El Shaheed: The Mysterious 'Anonymous' behind Egypt's Revolt" from Newsweek.

And then here's a scary graphic of what happens when the government doesn't like what's going on via the interwebs:

What's amazing to me is how the people of Egypt have taken up the power of protecting each other from the looters and thugs (the bad people that many believe are being encouraged by Mubarak's regime).  They guard the streets, homes, and store fronts.  They guard the museums.  They differentiate between "true Egyptians" who have the best of the people/country at heart and the "thugs" who hope to undermine the revolution.  They also reverted to old technologies like ham radios and Morris Code to maintain communication.  Google even set up a method of getting around the internet blackout (more here).  Governments may have to walk a fine line, but people can help each other.  Pretty. Damn. Cool.

As I finish writing this, roughly 1,000,000 have gathered in Tahrir square to march in protest and ask Mubarak to step down.  Now one knows when the march will start, because the movement doesn't have a leader...I guess the march starts when a few people decide to start walking?