Why tamarod

Doss is trying to start his own political movement but is largely ostracized from the group. We wanted a road map and elections. We said that we agreed that none of us five would run for office, and that we would elect new names, new faces from the revolution," Doss said.

Hesham Gobran, the owner of the apartment that Tamarod used as their campaign headquarters, said, "The group seemed happy until the state decided to put its hand on Tamarod. Badr, Aziz, and Shahin appeared overly excited by the media spotlight and seemed suddenly flushed with cash, Gobran said.

There were never any papers, he said, but he, along with four other people who worked with the Tamarod movement, told BuzzFeed that Badr, Aziz, and Shahin suddenly appeared around the office with tablet computers that appear to have been gifted to them.

A young activist named Mohamed Badia who had, until then, been in charge of finances, was suddenly given another task by Badr. Hamam said when he asked about the decision to remove their only finance officer, Badr told him, "We trust each other and the checks come directly to us, so there is no real need for a finance person as long as there is trust. Both Hamam and Gobran said there was no transparency over the group's finances, but that Badr, Aziz, and Shahin were increasingly keen to meet with donors and control funds.

One female activist, who joined the group in early June, said it appeared to be a combination of money and power that corrupted the core founders. They had resources, money, made available to them by people with a lot of power," she said, asking not to be named because her parents are both involved in political movements. And as long as they said what the state wanted them to say, they could have it all.

Less than a year ago, Yasmine Taltawy was a member of Tamarod. Today, she hangs a poster of Sisi above the cash register and tapes small Egyptian flags to her clothing shop's storefront. She recalled crying the night of July 3, when Sisi announced that the army had overthrown Morsi and would be moving toward early elections.

I was so angry at this suggestion," she said. That the army would help us hold new elections and then step away. She said she has "no problem with Sisi running" but adds that her cousin now gloats when he asks her if she is happy about the miltary's rise to power.

Are you happy you helped Sisi? I don't really have an answer for him," Taltawy said. Unlike many in Egypt, Doss doesn't know who he will vote for in the upcoming elections. He won't vote for Sisi, or the rival liberal presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, he says, and can only hope a new candidate steps forward to challenge them.

He's not sorry for starting Tamarod, he stresses, though he's disappointed in where it's led. Contact Sheera Frenkel at sheera. Got a confidential tip? Few do not use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other portals to disseminate their messages and document their experiences and efforts.

Internet penetration numbers, while shoddy, hover near the forty percent mark, a dramatic increase over the past year. To reach this growing digital intelligentsia, government offices, cabinet members, politicians, and everyone of considerable influence uses the social media to distribute information and influence public opinion. With this growing space for political expression—and despite its polarization between pro-Brotherhood, opposition, and unaffiliated activist—the capacity to organize online has been heightened significantly.

Hundreds of protests and strikes occur across the country every week with most of these utilizing social media as a platform for engagement, mobilization, and documentation. Those activities that court or attract public figures tend to see their capacity magnify and their participation increase. In a country full of societal enclaves and constituencies with varying degrees of connectivity, it is no longer sustainable for a protest movement to exist in one sphere and not another.

Now that the debate between Clay Shirky and Malcolm Gladwell over the role of social media in the Arab uprisings has grown both outdated and inconsequential, we are in a position to unpack utility without dogmatically obsessing over whether one technological innovation or another should be credited with a revolution.

But it may be best to historicize the incapacitation of both perspectives, in a most abridged fashion. Not only was the protest movement sustained, it grew in size and expanded in geographic reach.

It would be critical to examine how this campaign, largely intent on unseating President Morsi, utilized various communication channels at its disposal and the extent to which its appeal is a product of its strategic messaging and choice of mediated approaches. As opposed to most protest movements in Egypt since the uprising against Mubarak, which follow in the footsteps of "We are all Khaled Said" and often begin with the creation of a Facebook page and building a following online prior to attempting community outreach, a new movement that began in May known as Tamarod Rebellion went about mobilization differently.

This is largely a result of having witnessed the difficulty of rallying public opinion to recognize the crimes committed by the military during the SCAF-led transition. During the eighteen months of military rule under SCAF, and with public opinion about the armed forces extremely favorable, the men in fatigue committed grave violations against the rights of Egyptians.

In a short time period in , they detained 12, civilians with unlawful military tribunals, oversaw virginity tests against women protesters, and killed scores of activists in the Maspero, Mohammed Mahmoud, and Cabinet sit-in incidents. Despite these violations, Egyptians still had an overwhelmingly positive view of the military establishment. By crowd sourcing projectors and distributing these videos online, each community of activists organized their own screenings in cities and towns.

In just a few months, these screenings amounting in the thousands. By contrast, much of the non-Islamist revolutionary groups and opposition parties have been notoriously underwhelming in their offline mobilization, with the exception of having produced a widely resonant message ahead of the 25 January uprising and a few other instances in the past two years.

Nevertheless, this outreach tends to be limited to metropolitan urban areas and produces temporary engagement rather than sustained organizational loyalty and affiliation.

For this reason, with non-Islamist parties having been dealt a blow at every electoral process since the toppling of Mubarak, of which there have been plenty, grassroots outreach strategies have been imperative. Many of these have attempted to marry offline and online components with varying degrees of success.

I will not discuss here the impetus of this campaign or its legal legitimacy, as this is available more comprehensively elsewhere. Instead, I wish to shed light on the communication strategies utilized by the campaign. Tamarod has learned from the Kazeboon campaign by focusing primarily on the communities not serviced by social media and digital technology. As part of a two-prong collective action effort, Tamarod did the counterintuitive thing by starting with a paper petition campaign to gather signatures from Egyptians across the country that demand an early presidential election and other demands articulated clearly by the campaign.

Most Egyptians are suspicious of the police, security, and intelligence agencies and tend to be guarded and protective of their identifications, particularly when it comes to political dissent. So when Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood collaborated to gather one million petition signatures in early to demand an amendment of the constitution and the election law to allow opposition candidates to run for presidential elections, it was considered a challenging and colossal undertaking.

Three years later, Tamarod has not only invited Egyptians to sign their support, they are also asked to do so by providing their national identification numbers, thereby registering their dissent against the Muslim Brotherhood publicly.

Even if the total number of petitions signatures were half of the declared number, they would still amount to ten percent of the Egyptian population, a dizzyingly large number collected largely through traditional canvasing and on-foot campaigning. Even as their two month effort comes to a crescendo with protesters, for and against Morsi, spilling into the streets of Egypt in an unprecedented show of populist mobilization, the offices of Tamarod are still filled with uncounted petition forms.

On the eve of the massive protests of 30 June, while watching the tens of thousands stream towards Tahrir Square, Egyptian cartoonist Andeel sacrastically commented: "What we are witnessing today is a defeat of Facebook and Mark Zuckerbeg and a thunderous triumph for Xerox! One of the paradoxes of the Egyptian revolution and politics at large is the pervasion of suspicion of political partisanship.

Organized politics and hierarchy have become anathema in an environment which privileges unaffiliated representation at the expense of systematized tiered political structure. The disenchantment with political representation explains the overwhelmingly dissociated nature of the protests during the eighteen days in January and February It is also the reason by the growing popularity of once unknown candidates like Hamdeen Sabbahi.

As the Muslim Brotherhood announces new rallies and General el-Sissi calls for a mandate to take stronger action against the opposition, human rights in Egypt are scarcely safe in the hands of either side. More protests came Friday The supporters of the deposed government are increasingly distancing themselves from Mohammed Morsi as an individual.

So far, Egypt's non-Islamists have remained united. But the conflict between supporters of the Mubarak regime and liberal revolutionaries continues to be a problem. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw. Go to the new dw. More info OK. Wrong language? Change it here DW. COM has chosen English as your language setting.

COM in 30 languages. Deutsche Welle. Audiotrainer Deutschtrainer Die Bienenretter. Middle East Egypt's Tamarod and the military united for now Egypt's bloody past and uncertain future Cairo threatens to ban Muslim Brotherhood Muslim Brotherhood won't shy away from martyrdom Egypt's media openly embrace political bias Violence spreads on Egypt's 'day of rage' EU fears the worst in Egypt Germany urges Egypt to end the violence US 'complicit' in killings in Egypt Egypt expert: 'The old guard is back in power' 'They weren't terrorists.

They didn't deserve to die. Clever idea, well implemented Five Egyptians had the idea to collect the signatures against Morsi. Tamarod activists collected 22 million signatures. Tamarod supporters helped oust Morsi. Westerwelle talked to Tamarod activist during a recent visit. Human rights still at risk in Egypt As the Muslim Brotherhood announces new rallies and General el-Sissi calls for a mandate to take stronger action against the opposition, human rights in Egypt are scarcely safe in the hands of either side.