Last night was a lot of fun at the Microsoft Party and then a subsequent after party at the Carlton Hotel. We were some of the first ones into the Microsoft Party and kept it going right up until the end… that we tried to stall as long as possible! A few of us then made our way to the Carlton Hotel with some new Microsoft friends. I was in awe that I was going to be in this hotel for an actual purpose and not to just wander around and pretend that I had a purpose! The night became very interesting after that and not in a good way. We ended up going to the Martinez for a little while and while I was there I managed to step on some glass that was not fun but a gallant Canadian man picked me up and carried me to the lobby to they could pick the glass out of my foot… which continued to bleed on and off until, unable to catch a cab for hours, we caught the 6:40 AM train back to JLP. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to the morning events of the festival.
After cleaning up my foot again, Emily and I made our way to the festival in time for the meeting with Amr Slama, an Egyptian Filmmaker. That was all of the title we were given for a man who was a pivotal figure in the recent Egyptian revolution. He was very humble about it, but he is one of the key people. He was one of the leaders for the first charge on the square, was kidnapped, had to escape, and still he continued to tweet the safe routes for the rebels to take in order to try to avoid harm. He still works very hard to produce videos to educate people about the Egyptian constitution and their new rights. He told us that no one thought that Egypt would rebel because Egyptian people tend to live up to a stereotype of being lazy and not caring. However, social networking changed that. It allowed people to see the posting of a brother of a young man who had been kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the Egyptian police… before and after. The brother took a picture of the corpse and posted the before and after pictures on the internet. This sparked outrage in the Egyptian society. Having just looked at the pictures myself, I am brought to tears by the cruelty that occurred in broad daylight. It makes you just have to stop and consider how lucky we are in the US today that we take certain privileges for granted and call them undeniable rights. It was amazing to hear that the government didn’t report anything on the first revolt and thought that if they just ignored it that it would go away… I think this is where Facebook came in because the government could censor it. It was quite strange to hear Amr talking about censorship. He made it sound like they were going to still have some forms of it even after the revolution. I realize that the country might not be able to handle that much change all at once but any form of censorship does not seem like a good idea. He says that the people are very and that you can feel the change in attitude just being out in the streets. They are getting to know their neighbors for the first time because they aren’t afraid of saying the wrong thing. Amr encouraged us all to be rebels in our own way and defined a rebel as someone who disobeys when they see something that they think is wrong. He took this a step farther and said to not advertise for products that weren’t good for people and didn’t benefit society.
This talk today is definitely one of my favorites and I truly enjoyed hearing about the new hope for these people.
xoxo
Kitty
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