[Photo: Comrades, It’s Over by Tovaris published under Creative Commons license, and also available here.]
In 1992-93, I lived in Budapest, Hungary. I arrived one year after the last Russian tank rolled out, and three years after the Iron Curtain fell.
The free market economy in Budapest was fresh and fragile. As an economics major and a naive American, I was excited about living in a country that had just been born into the free market.
I barely learned to speak Magyar, but I had plenty of opportunities: I lived with a Hungarian family and played basketball for one of the country’s professional teams.
One afternoon as basketball practice was winding down and we were shooting free throws, the subject of the economy came up.
“Just be patient,” I suggested in my American know-it-all way, “This may take some time.”
My friend and our team captain Christina looked me straight in the face and in an uncharacteristically unfriendly tone said, “Bec, I don’t have time. My boyfriend and I want to get married this year, and start our family.”
This was one of the most powerful lessons I learned in my economic studies: theories don’t mean jack-shit to the people who are trying to get jobs, get married, and start families.
What’s real is what’s happening…not what could happen, or might happen.
This explains why youth - the next generation - are critical to revolution. For the young, the future is stretched out before them in long, wide ribbons. And they ache for their futures to be as robust and prosperous as possible.
Youth - people like Christina - are living and hoping and dreaming in the future tense. They haven’t yet given up. Or resigned themselves. Or settled.
They next generation wants to believe - they need to believe - that their best days are ahead of them.
Which brings me to Egypt.
Mona Eltahawy, reporting for Marketplace (here) explains the youth predicament in Egypt:
“Imagine being a 25-year-old Egyptian. You take advantage of your country’s free university education, but you’re crammed into lecture halls along with thousands of other students. You wonder how useful your degree will be once you hit the job market. The state which had once guaranteed your parents and their entire generation jobs, couldn’t even pretend to want to do the same with you if it tried. You feel like your life is on hold: No job, no money and no freedom. Those who can, leave for opportunities for abroad and those who remain are in danger of slipping into despair.”
A social contract, broken
Every parent wants their children to have it better than they did. The first generation immigrant works three jobs to make sure their kids go to college.
But in Egypt - and across the world - the next generation may not have it better. Yes, prosperity will continue to increase overall, but it will be not doled out even-handedly. The western empires are loosing ground, while India and China are gaining.
The next generation in Egypt - a country that once saw India and China as its economic peers (“Yes, we’re poor, but at least we’re ALL poor”) - sees their former peers leapfrogging them, and they wonder, “What’s going on here? Why aren’t we keeping pace?”
And it’s not just relative wealth compared to other countries; it’s the sinking feeling that youth across the Middle East have, that they do not have the opportunity to meet their potential.
Magali Rheault of Gallup writes that in Egypt, “fewer than 3 in 10 15- to 29-year-olds say Egypt’s leadership maximizes youth potential, down from almost 4 in 10 in 2009.” [Read the full Silatech report, “Silatech Index: Voices of Young Arabs” here, or the Gallup Poll: “Young Egyptians increasingly believe their potential is untapped,” here .]
Despair. That’s what led Egyptian youth to the streets. They had nothing to lose, and - working together - were willing to fight for a better future.
The Fast Beat the Slow
So young Egyptians took to the streets. They used the tools of their generation - Twitter, Flip cameras, Facebook, etc. - to mobilize and document their revolution. But their technical dexterity is only half of the story.
The other half of the story is their laconic leadership.
Thomas P.M. Barnett writing for Esquire [here] referred to Hosni Mubarak’s team as “sclerotic regimes fumbling for responses to fast-moving events.” Thomas Friedman recently described Mubarak as, “staggeringly out of touch with what is happening inside his country.”
These are descriptions of bureaucrats, not leaders. Lee Iacocca titled his latest book with a question many youth have, “Where have all the leaders gone?” Our leaders can’t seem to tap into the zeitgest of those they’re leading, let alone be able to see around corners to adress trends.
I giggle to myself when I hear the PMS (pale, male and stale) say things like, “I don’t use Twitter because I don’t care what people had for breakfast.” I imagine that Hosni Mubarak once said that, too.
What’s next: Engaging the next gen in rebuilding
In all, six groups were represented at the talks hosted by Vice-President Omar Suleiman, to re-invent Egypt. Two of the six were a coalition of youth organizations, and a group of “wise men”. Source; BBC here. This is the way it should be: young and elders co-creating a future that will work for all generations.
It’s not a coincidence that these two groups - our elders and our youth - are often marginalized in “developed” counties: we shut our elders into nursing homes, and we ask our children to be seen and not heard. Leadership doesn’t rest only with 19-64 year olds. Leadership - true leadership, the kind that will stand up against incredible odds, speak truth to power, and yes, tweet about it - knows no age limits.
Here’s to Egypt. And its future.
