The following two statements were distributed by the teachers during their protest last Saturday…

Few things I found interesting in the statements as well as the protest included:

1- The teachers were very critical of the Ministry of the Eduation and the regime in general, but also linked the malaise to the US pressures on the ME govts to “reform” their educational institutions.

2- The teachers are drawing parallels with other struggles, citing the successes of the Real Estate Tax Collectors, and discussing the need to coordinate with them as well as with the 9th of March Movement for the Independence of the Universities, which campaigns for the rights of Higher Education lecturers and staged the first university professors national strike in decades last March. In conversations with the teachers, also the word “Mahalla” pops up a lot.

3- In the absence of support from the state-backed Teachers’ Syndicate, the teachers are forming their own organizations to fight back, like “Teachers Without a Syndicate,” “Teachers’ Voice,” “Egypt’s Teachers’ Network [Under Establishment],” etc… But another phenomenon that’s worth paying attention for is the rising role of “el-Rawabet” (Associations) in leading the struggle. The Associations, in theory, are registered under the Ministry of Social Insurance as some form of “social clubs” for workers and civil servants. Their roles supposedly are non-political and limited to providing some social services. For some reason or another, the state’s control over these Associations is not as absolute and firm as its grip on the unions and syndicates. So, increasingly the workers and civil servants are using these associations as channels for activism and mobilization. The examples do not only include the teachers, whose associations have been central in the latest series of protests, but also we have the case of the railway workers, whose association members have been leading the strikes and the protests in that sector from 2007 onwards. Moreover, last month I visited the office of the General Tax Officers Association, located in one of the historical buildings in downtown Cairo. These officers belong to a different branch of the civil service, and receive roughly double if not triple the incomes of their counterparts at the Real Estate Tax Collection Agency. Yet, they have their problems and grievances, which the state-backed General Union of Bank and Insurance Workers is ignoring of course. So which channel are they using to lobby the govt? Their Association. Politics always finds a way…