Egyptians on Strike

So while I was sick last week - I didn't blog extra. First the one blog I did make wouldn't publish.... and I finally got it to publish today but had to take the pictures down to make it happen... boo. But anyways... last week was eventful on campus. The janitorial staff went on strike with a huge showing of support from the students and faculty. The law department I am in was in support. In fact the Department Chair helped to organize part of the strike and I believe was in the negotiation process. It was HUGE. The workers and hundreds of people gathered around them protested for hours each day outside the administration building. Without anyone to empty the trash, sweep, etc - in about 24 hours we were literally swimming in a sea of trash. Just to compound things a little - the weekend was to be the Alumni Sports weekend where the Algerian, Mauritius, Egyptian and Libyan national rugby teams were having exhibition games, there were exhibition games from the AUC sports teams, the sports awards, all kinds of things. And it was an excuse to bring out alumni (and their $$$) to see all the new campus and the athletic areas of campus.
So just to make sure the administration would be fully and completely embarrassed in front of the alumni - the students went the extra mile in dirtying up campus. Instead of just throwing your McDonald's bag let's say on the ground... you held it upside down and emptied its contents of wrappers, ketchup packets, napkins and few stale fries onto the ground and THEN through the bag on the ground. The idea was not only would the administration be embarrassed, but they would be forced to tell the alumni where their dollars were NOT going - to the staff that work 6 days a week and bring home $75 per month.
Yes - I said they net $75 per month. Some of the more senior janitorial staff bring home as much as $135 per month. It's truly outrageous really. When an undergraduate student pays 55,000 pounds each semester and a graduate student pays 80,000 pounds each semester to attend and live here - and the janitorial staff (80 of them combined- net less than 50,000 pounds together each semester). Yes the amount of money that ONE undergraduate student pays per semester to attend school and live on campus - pays the entire NET salary of EVERY janitor on campus for the same time period. It makes me a little nauseated and REALLY frustrated. That's why many of the American students were out in force - one because a lot of us have union parents and we know what it's like when they have to walk out on their jobs just to get treated fairly. And two - because we know it works. And three - because none of us could believe that our money was contributing to a system of such gross inequality.
Well needless to say they had to hire a private janitorial firm over night to clean up campus but it wasn't fully clean by the time the alumni got here. They were standing around in circles pointing to fountains FILLED with trash and garbage cans still overflowing on the ground. The added attention of the strike making it on to plenty of blogs... campus and Egyptian newspapers and even on CNN.com (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-508913) the administrators budged. The students started a facebook solidarity page with 1100 supporters and an online petition with over 2000 student signatures. The workers got most of their demands met. The administration even went so far as to email the exact terms of the settlement to the ENTIRE AUC community because they just wanted to see the protests end and they knew that EVERYONE was involved anyways so they felt the need to save some face.

It felt really good to see the students mobilize around an issue so quickly and willingly. It felt really good to see Egyptians realizing they deserve rights and protesting and striking for them. This is something as I understand it - does not happen in a country with the authoritarian nature that Egypt has. I heard rumors of other places in Cairo being inspired by AUC and striking at their jobs too.. I don't have details but it was exciting to see the populace move in this direction. It reminds me of the famous quote - all it takes for bad people to win is for good people to not do anything about it. The good people of AUC and Egypt did something about it!