Unrest in Tunisia and now Egypt is youth-led

The always sharp and spirited Mona Eltahawy has a great piece at The Washington Post about the recent protests in Egypt, which followed a four-week uprising in Tunisia that resulted in the fall of President Zine el-ABidine Ben Ali, who had been in office for 23 frickin’ years. It was the first time Arab people ousted one of their own leaders through mostly peaceful protest. Eltahawy writes of the Egyptian protests that have followed:

It was no accident that the protests coincided with Police Day, as youthful activists sought to focus attention not on a sham holiday but, instead, on the systematic brutality associated with Mubarak’s security services. Egyptians in Mahalla in particular have smarted since three people were killed there by police in 2008 during massive protests that followed months of strikes.

She goes on to talk about the ways in which this is truly a youth-led rebellion across the Arab world. In Egypt, for example, the media age is only 24. In Tunisia, it’s 29.7. Youth are not going to stand for the status quo in the way that some of their elders have. They are angry, and they are ready to take action. Eltahawy explains:

Watching Tunisians make possible what Arabs have always been told was impossible burned away the apathy that bound Egyptians – and revealed decades’ worth of smoldering rage. It also destroyed the myth of youth “slactivists” who some alleged were content with organizing on the Internet and speaking out only on social networking sites.