Feminism, Coups, and Democracies in Egypt

Continued from previous page

The mass demonstrations lay the possibility for a new participatory politics that is not bound by misogyny, patriarchy, global capitalism, and the racist formations of colonialism. This kind of democracy may not look familiar or friendly to power brokers outside Egypt but that hardly invalidates the possibility that it might be so.

Traditional political language is not helpful here.  A coup? Maybe - but probably not. It is not totally known what the military will do in the long term or who its constituency is this time around; and maybe it's the million's strong dedicated to the 99 percent. Critics say that the military is not an elected body. But neither are the corporations that run much of the world. Maybe one's person's checks and balances is another's coup. What about the Bush-Gore election when the Supreme Court chose the US president? No one votes for the Court in the US. 

Western critics say that the Egyptians should have waited for the next election and then voted Morsi out. That democratic process demands that the public stand down and act rationally and use their vote as their voice. Egyptians respond that they have waited and too much has worsened around them and that something must happen, now.

Street demonstrations are participatory democracy especially when it's a wide swath of one's country representing all kinds of people.  Morsi was failing pretty much everyone - with bread, and freedom and social justice. Rising food prices and mass unemployment is undemocratic if you are suffering.  So why not take to the streets to keep this kind of bad "rule" and "rulers" in check? Why is mass protest not the first step towards democracy? The ordinariness of the ordinary citizen taking action is both potentially revolutionary anddemocratic. 

Elections appear to be offered as an alternative to activist participatory politics. But what of the repressive Brotherhood regime who has refused to listen? Mass participation deepens and clarifies democracy; elections very often do not.  What about the elections that authorised Chilean dictator Pinochet? Elections are not automatically democratic in their process or their outcomes.

This recent 2013 uprising in Egypt can also be seen as a process - one that started in the streets in 2011 according to  Mona El-Ghobashy - and then diverged with the election of Morsi. In 2013 it has taken hold again to enforce an inclusive democracy of all the people, including the Brotherhood but not rule by them or any one segment.  Maybe Egypt is ahead of all of us just now. 

I wish we could get 20-30 million people out in our streets - in Texas, or Ohio, or North Carolina where the right wing Republicans are doing everything they can to create an untenable anti-democratic world for women and girls. They are trying to make abortion impossible to get if they cannot make it totally illegal.

Let the name-calling stop. The US is a democracy that is under grievous assault. The NSA (National Security Administration) spies on just about everyone; Guantanamo detainees are wrongly detained and forced fed; the court guts civil rights laws for blacks; millions of people have no health care; other millions have no jobs; women's rights to their bodies are under horrific assault by the Republican party. The US public votes - but almost as many do not vote as do vote.

We do not usually demonstrate in great numbers in the US today although we have had a few big demos in Wisconsin and Texas as of late.  And I am pretty sure that waiting till the next election will not help most of us out. I am watching Egypt and especially their women for now. Let us not have this amazing revolutionary moment be rewritten by critics who are invested in their own power.