Cairo's Rebels
GRAFFITI RALLYING POINTS

Excerpted from Suzee In The City.wordpress.com        - Copyright 'fair use' allowances and restrictions apply.    A Cairo graffiti artist depicts the ongoing battle between the authorities and those protesting severe crackdowns of the recent past - will the spraycan prove mightier than the sword?

         After the bloody "Mohammed Mahmoud" riots of 2011, angry Egyptian graffiti writers took to the walls with a vengeance - lashing out at what they termed brutal governmental suppression.   The amount of graffiti produced was prodigious, and much of it deemed by the International community to be quality art.

Excerpted from New York Times.com        - Copyright 'fair use' allowances and restrictions apply.

         Shortly after that, Egyptian protesters, all of whom have been generally lumped together, rightly or wrongly, as 'Muslim Brotherhood', had their heads cracked again by the authorities in the infamous 'Port Said Riots'.   This was once again a catalyst to the already incensed graffiti-writers.   And the focus of the bulk of the new graffiti remained on Mohamed Mahmoud, the journalist shot earlier by alleged police snipers.   And yet again much of the new graffiti that began to sprout up in, and around the inner city was visually spectacular - even if one didn't read Arabic.

Excerpted from New York Times.com        - Copyright 'fair use' allowances and restrictions apply.

         Several of these graffitied walls around the city, such as those in Tahrir Square, became rallying points for Cairo's protesting masses, much to the chagrin of the Government.   The Egyptian Government would only stand for this direct affront to their authority for so long - but on the other hand, they knew timing would be all-important.   They would, or so they thought, give it some time, a 'decent interval', and when things had cooled down sufficiently, they would ease in, under cover of darkness, and whitewash the lot off the face of the earth, once and for all.

Excerpted from New York Times.com        - Copyright 'fair use' allowances and restrictions apply.

         To say the Cairo Government miscalculated the fervor - not to mention the attention-span - of the Cairo citizens would prove to be a primo misunderstatement.   As soon as the city's maintenance personnel started whitewashing the anti-government graffiti, citizens, to include journalists, photographed the event with enthusiasm - much of it ending up on YouTube.   But that was just the beginning of the backlash - almost immediately, the painted-over graffiti was replaced by brand-new, equally vitriolic graffiti, often times dishing out challenges to the Government like, “ERASE IT AGAIN, YOU COWARDLY REGIME".

Excerpted from New York Times.com        - Copyright 'fair use' allowances and restrictions apply.

         A blog, The Lede, associated with the New York Times has provided a wealth of spectacular graffiti in the form of photos and video.   It is highly recommended all visit them at thelede.blogs  <link> .