POP press
My girlfriend is managing a festival at the Institute of Art and Culture at Copenhagen University. The theme for 2012 is POP.
I’m doing their wordpress at ikkfestival.dk
Egyptisk broder: Jeg vil gerne stemme imorgen
Moossan, 26 år, kommer lige fra middagsbønnen, og fortæller ivrigt og på flydende engelsk om sin og Egyptens situation: En situation, hvor mindst 20% af de unge står uden arbejde. Selv vil Moossan stemme islamistisk.
“Jeg føler mig gammel. Jeg har ikke noget job, og jeg har ikke etableret en familie, der kan føre min slægt videre. Men jeg klager ikke. Jeg er heldig med at have noget. En bærbar computer og en telefon for eksempel.”
Moossan har en bachelor i Naturvidenskab, og før Revolutionen tog han håbefuldt til Sydafrika for at studere medicin. Planen mislykkedes. Moossan kunne hverken få lov at studere eller et ordentligt arbejde. For en uge siden vendte han så tilbage til Alexandria, igen uden udsigt til arbejde.
“Jeg savnede Alexandria, ikke Egypten. Lige nu forstår jeg ikke hvad der sker i mit land. Men jeg vil da gerne stemme imorgen.”"
Islam i et nyt Egypten
Mens nyheder fra Tahrir ofte viser unge liberale aktivister på den ene side, og gamle reaktionære på den anden, så hører Moossan til en gruppe af unge, ofte arbejdsløse Egyptere, man sjældent hører om.
Som veluddannet og praktiserende muslim, er det vigtigt for Moossan, at Egypterne kan gå til stemmeurnerne, og at islam bliver repræsenteret politisk:
“Da vi skulle stemme på denne skole sidste år, spærrede Hosni Mubarak vejene ind til skolen, og hvis man gik ind og stemte, så tog de ens ting – selv ens identitetspapirer. Sådan har det altid været! Jeg har ingen anelse om, hvordan det bliver imorgen.”
Moossan støtter en ny konstitution, hvor sharia er udgangspunktet for loven. Det kan tvinges igennem, det skal gøres via dialog og valg.
Et spørgsmål, der ofte bliver stillet fortiden er, hvorvidt piger ifølge FJP skal påbydes at bære tørklæde i skolen. Dette vil FJP ikke svare direkte på, og det er vigtigt spørgsmål for mange sekulære og landets 10% koptisk kristne, samt andre religiøse mindretal. Moossan bruger en lidt skæv historie til at forklare sin egen overbevisning:
“Hvis du havde et barn, en lille dreng, der sagde til dig, at han vil hoppe ud fra en bygning. Vil du så ikke forsøge at overtale ham til at lade være?”
Ifølge en undersøgelse udført i samarbejde mellem avisen Al-Ahrams tænketank og Dansk-Egyptisk Dialog Institut vil ca. 40% af egypterne stemme på et islamistisk funderet parti, mens blot 15% går ind for en islamisk stat.
Der er brug for en ny plan
Moossan er reflekteret omkring situationen i Egypten, men har ikke megen tillid til medier og politikere. Men det er tiltrængt med forandringer:
“I det gamle regime var man under en konstant frygt. Frygt for politiet og for overgreb. Jeg håber det ændrer sig.”
Selv ved Moossan ikke hvad fremtiden vil bringe ham. Vil han få et arbejde? Vil han få lov til at stemme på imorgen? På trods af fiaskoen i Sydafrika og manglen på arbejde, så tror Moossan på, at han er nødt til at udvikle sig og uddanne sig – men hvordan:
“Jeg skal have en plan. Det har jeg bare ikke lige nu.”
Broderskabet har været fraværende i den seneste uges protester, også i Alexandria.
Alex: afternoon sun vs. the battle of the night
Yesterday I witnessed 4000 demonstrators marching past my hotel. Now, I dont live in the middle of the city, so maybe this wasn’t the largest demonstration. Here in Alexandria the people march, not like in Tahrir Square’s sit-in. The demonstration I saw was vigorous, diverse and colorful, as you see in the picture.
It is a different story that gets told in the media. In Danish e-paper I am now quoted as an eye-witness to battles – I’m not. It’s true there are battles, but they are late at night – and primarily at the Police Headquarters. Otherwise, Alexandria is mostly warm afternoon sun, steaming city life, delicious koshary and shish, the lovely and slow trams (I’ve heard some are from CPH), and last but not least – the sea.
It is to hard to figure out what to believe is the right path for Egypt: should they oust the SCAF now, giving power to a new so-called civil counsel that would figure out what to do, or the slow ride: go on and elect a parliament, a shura counsil, a president and then a constitutional committee that will then draft a new constitution.
The calculations are sooo complicated. Some are afraid that elections will give power to non-seculars, and that they will use 2nd article of the Egyptian Constitution. According to this article, Islam is the official state religion, and the Sharia is the main source of legislation. My subtle analysis is, that I think the Muslim Brotherhood are to afraid of the activists to go down this path. A new constitution is needed, and as the author of the book I’m reading, Edwar al-Kharrat have said: “The old motto of Egypt’s liberal era still applies: religion is for God, the homeland is for all.”
All I want to say is that: Alexandria is not either the battle of the night or the warm vigarous city; actually, it felt like it all meltet together on that moment – on the picture – as a demonstration of indignation and unity.
But what does the No-U-turn sign really mean??
Cairo and chaos. Next stop: Alexandria and anarchy?
1st day in Cairo is always chaotic.. At least that is what you expect! True to that, mine startet with a walk towards Tahris square: I quickly realised that today was not the time for Revolution sightseeing – youth have been in turmoil with the police all day. I saw a police truck being trashed, people taking pictures and filming it, tweeting it instantly. These kinds of symbolic spektacles ignite a special tension in people. But I understand the anger and need to protest against teargas and the fire of rubberbullets leading to alot of injuries today – heavy consequences for freeing your right to speak. So, instead I took a walk around downtown; no map, no cause – just the way I always do it!
Later, after having bought a map, a book and some pretty nice postcards, I met up with a Danish friend and her two Egyptian friends. The two well-dressed and english speaking Egyptian men had to go fight for their democracy, so the danes went for a walk around the save Embassy area of Zamalek. Some turkish coffee, shishaa and nice food later, I’m now in me hotelroom listening to the buzzing sound of the arab street. People want faster elections an less SCAF control. I don’t think they will stop tonight – people are gathering in thousands now!
Tomorrow I’m going to Alexandria, to see what ActionAid Denmark is doing to the Egyptian youth on the International Leadership Training Seminar.
As always, I’m sceptic towards these kind of trainings, focussing on leadership and all that jazz. Here is a special thanks to Rune Lykkeberg of the Danish newspaper Information for reminding us all of the pitfalls of Leadership-mania and providing us with tips and tricks for anti-leadership everyday practices (information.dk/antiledelse – in danish). I really like the tip about praising leaders: By doing this the subordinate becomes the judge of your superior, making the leader dependent on your recognition.
Sometimes its good with some well-informed anarchists – hope to meet some in Alexandria. I will write when I find out!
Migrating a WordPress site
This post is a confession:
I have been using too much time on work in relation to Grundtvigs Højskole (GH) this past week, so I’m in a little hurry preparing for my thesis trip to Cairo this friday.
Yet, I have to share the work I have done:
Other than my coming course on GH, I’ve been working on the alumnymagazine for GH with my girlfriend, who is also a member of the board. But what I really wanted to show is that I did an IMO successful migration of our 3 year old GH-alumny-site ff-elever.dk to the new site grundtvigselever.dk. I used FTP and phpMyadmin. Also, I managed to upgrade it from wordpress 2.6 to 3.2.1, with no problems (phew..).
BTW: I still kind of like the theme I designed back in 2008, based on Fjords by Peterandrej, that was further based on Qwilm!, by Oriol.
Logo by Stefan Jesper Gründl, www.sjgportfolio.dk.
Now I’m sitting in my mother-in-law’s summer house with my girlfriend – nice and cozy. But now there is no excuse – THESIS! But don’t be alarmed: I have already made connections through ActionAid Denmark’s training4change.org, through some students from my university, connections here and there, and yes: good ol’ CouchSurfing. Can’t wait to be in Cairo!
KNOKL work
Today, I have been working on this Drupal site for my sister-in-law.
It’s been running for a year on a Drupal 6.22 (there’s a 7 out now), but it’s really easy to handle now and quite optimized for smart-phones and tablets because of its simplicity. Take a look and give me some hints on what you think.
Left-wing Video
So I’m back in rainy Denmark, but we do have some shiny golden days. I made this 2 parts video-blog from sunny Krogerup Folk-Highschool were the danish left-wing think-tank CEVEA held their annual Summer University course. Krogerup is so harmonically majestic and a perfect place to discuss politics and democracy under the blue skies of august.
It was inspiring observe CEVEA’s way of doing a Folk-Highschool course on a political subjects; good inspiration for my up-comming course on Grundtvigs Folk-Highschool starting January twenty-twelve – though the purpose will bit different. But more on that later! Here some pictures with sounds. Beware – they’re in Danish.
Weekend in Amman
BTW: Sunday, the King held a speech on national television. Read it here. ‘Democracy’ is mentioned 7 times, but ‘nation’ is mentioned 15 times. Is there a gap (in practice) between the concept of ‘national unity’ and the concept of ‘public participation’ – time will reveal.
“THnx brother”
Very sad day yesterday. The peaceful March 24 protesters – demanding an elected parliament and other reforms – were shut down by so-called anti-reformists on the second day of protests, 1 got killed.
I was there the first day, 24th of March, and it was nice to see young well-organized Jordanians calling for reform. The next day after the friday prayers there where thousands of reform protestors, but later in the afternoon anti-reformists where gathering at a park in another part of the city and they were driven in buses and in caravan to the pro-reform sit-in.
The sit-in was at a Dakhliyyeh circle 1km from our office, and when I left work to go home I saw a lot of young kids with sticks, flags and posters of the King going to the pro-reform demo. It did not look promising.
We had three friends at the scene. So back home we where calling our folks and following the events on twitter. By night fall it turned ugly. Somebody turned off the lights under the bridge over the circle, and then the police let the anti-reformists march on the protestors. None of our friends got hurt, Inshalla.
A blogger wrote at 9 pm “Any belief that Jordanians are educated, politically-aware, civil & ready to establish democracy..were crushed today”
On the other hand: 15 members of the King’s newly formed National Dialogue Committee resigned due to what happened yesterday.
I texted a friend to check on him, and he answered: “THnx brother, this is not the end.”
Today, people are gathering against suppression & to pay condolences to the man who lost his life in the protest.
I’m keeping my distance, spreading these words.
See pictures from yesterday here:
http://www.7iber.com/2011/03/photos-dakhliyyeh-march24/
Read a thourough account of the events here:
http://www.black-iris.com/2011/03/26/the-quick-death-of-shabab-march-24-and-what-it-means-for-jordan/
Other POVs
I wanted to share som pictures of an activity here arranged by an Activista group. It was called Mosh Tanfesih (open valve). The event shows that Jordanians are not all like the one i blogged about the last time – Mr. Abassi.
This group use their creativity to inspire other youth to look differently at their society, and to open their own valves and join the Activista. In this event they used traditional arabian music, stand-up comidy and role-playing to get to the around thirty participants engaged. It was truly engaging. A participant told Yildiz (another intern here): “They speak our language, this is new for us.” I’m really looking forward to the next activities – I’ve heard they include videomaking 
In another part of Amman, I’ve had my first Arabic lesson today and it was Mumtas (excellent). Fatima, our teacher, asked me whether my mother is arabic.. Shukran jazeelan Fatima!
Later, in Zarqa, Lise and I was interviewing to girls for the 100th year anniversary of International Womens Day. It’s on tuesday the 8th of March, and the interviews are going to be published in Metroexpress together with alot of other interviews of women all over the world. One of the girls, a librarian in a whealchair, had to answer the stupid question: Explain yourself in three words? And she answered: I am strong.
I also want to link to the newsletter Lise and I created together with the Action Aid Denmark in MENA.