I was down on the floor doing my morning crunches. I don’t usually watch Morning Joe on MSNBC, but I was hoping to see some pictures from Cairo. Instead I heard Chris Matthews say he was ashamed to be an American because we are deserting our friend.
His friend is Hosni Mubarak.
Whether or not the US is deserting Mubarak remains to be seen. But I watch the Egyptians, maybe a million, in Liberation Square, and I know that they are my friends.
Not that old dictator, Hosni Mubarak.
Matthews can see young people in the streets, risking death for freedom on the one hand, and see an old tyrant of 30 years on the other? And then identify with the tyrant and not the young people?
Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen!
Today, we are all Egyptians.
In Fort Greene, Brooklyn a crowd of several hundred students and families chanted and sang out in the cold as panel of Mayor Bloomberg’s friends voted to close 12 more schools.
The NY Times says that closing schools is the signature policy of the Bloomberg administration. What a legacy!
The seven-foot, blue-eyed beaver mascot in a red Jamaica High School sweatshirt bobbed his head above teachers and parents chanting, “Whose schools? Our schools!”
Many protesters said they knew that their shouting would not change how the panel voted.
Above them, a 12-foot-high JumboTron screen, set up outside Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene, broadcast rock-music video montages of past protests to a crowd of hundreds.
Students blew whistles, rang cowbells and shouted, “Save our schools.” Christopher Martinez, 16, held up a sign with the words “Egypt is N.Y.,” in a nod to the continuing pro-democracy protests there. “We want to show that our voices can be heard here, too,” he said.
Fred Klonsky 