Occupy Wall Street sending envoys to Egypt

Megan Robertson, a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com, reports: At Thursday’s General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street in New York, a resolution was passed to allocate $29,000 to pay to send approximately 20 “OWS Ambassadors” to act as international observers in the Egyptian elections.

The Movement Building group of OWS brought this up to the GA after being contacted by a representative of a coalition of Egyptian civil society monitors, inviting the NY occupation to send representatives to help observe the elections.
[…]
While we don’t yet know what this means for Occupy Wall Street, it’s certainly a bold move — and one that could play out in several ways once they land in Egypt.

“It sounds like a brilliant move, in terms of Egyptian politics,” says Dr. Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University, and expert on Egyptian government and politics.

“Here’s the problem. Election monitoring in Egypt has always been a big issue. The country under the authoritarian regime has always been hostile to any kind of international monitoring role. After the revolution, essentially what the Egyptians brought in was a system of judicial monitoring of the elections. The judges themselves are not really interested in any international monitoring, and military rulers have been hostile to it as well,” says Dr. Borwn.

Strong nationalist sentiment within Egypt will also play a role, but could be a positive one.

“The world monitoring, in Arabic, can also mean”oversight” or “control.” “Monitors” sound like people who are coming in to take over. Now, there’s some sort of nationalist pride that can be set off — Egyptians may see it as, well, we’re teaching the Americans for a change. It can play into that very easily,” says Dr. Brown. “It’s a good political move because its an effective way to have a retort to the nationalist argument against monitoring.”

As far as the purpose of international monitors at the elections, they may not be able to play a huge role, but can still have an effect. “They can probably do a lot of seeing and watching the general atmosphere, but as far as being inside the polling places, there won’t be a lot of role for them. What groups of international monitors do, though, is provide a very effective cover for domestic monitoring efforts,” Dr. Brown explained.

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4 thoughts on “Occupy Wall Street sending envoys to Egypt”

  1. charlie

    i would be inresting toknow who is behind the funding of this “occupy ” movent
    i see where the occupy movent has invaded a conservative rally in california. They shoutd down and generally disrupted a meeting of people they disagree with. It is like the early days of hitler coming to power when his brown shirts disrupted and assaulted political ralleys of his political opponents…they are moving to more physical assaults of opponenets just like the brown shirts did 50 years ago.

  2. dickerson3870

    FOR THOSE WHO ARE TOO LAZY (OR TOO STUPID) TO USE GOOGLE: Donations To Occupy Wall Street Skyrocketed In Last Three Weeks , By Alexander Eichler, The Huffington Post, 10/28/11

    (excerpts)…As of October 10 — roughly three weeks after the first protesters amassed in lower Manhattan — donors had sent about $81,000 to various Occupy locations using the online payment service WePay, according to data provided by that company.
    But since then, contributions to the Occupy cause have quadrupled. As of this past Thursday, October 27, more than $325,000 in donations have come in through WePay. The vast majority of those funds were donated in the past two and a half weeks…
    …Looking at the data on who’s giving to the Occupy cause, WePay noted some other interesting trends.
    Male donors outnumber female donors almost two to one, they found, and while 58 percent of donors have finished college or graduate school, 42 percent don’t have a college degree.
    Over a quarter of donors using WePay — about 28 percent — earn more than $100,000 a year. Another 57 percent make between $35,000 and $100,000 a year.
    From a geographic standpoint, the donors seem to be widely dispersed. The average donor is about 861 miles from the site of the protest they’re giving to.
    Thirty-seven countries have given money to the Occupy movement through WePay, with Finland clocking the highest number of donations per capita. Other high-donating countries include Canada, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom.
    WePay said that the average Occupy-related donation is about $61.45…

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/28/occupy-wall-street-donations_n_1064165.html

  3. Roger Barton

    If money is being spent from donations provided to OWS from the 99% (if that is where the bulk of the funding comes from), than I would say many of them would be upset to see their donations being used for such purposes. I support OWS message of the 99%, but do not support international activities when were lead to believe this movement was about issues within our own country. Maybe I am a bit niave or maybe I misinformed, or both. I do know at this point, I am concerned and a bit disenfranchised by the decision to go on this trip. So I too now wonder who their donors maybe. Seems like this movement is being hijacked. I am unclear if the whole populist 99% message maybe a cover for something more devious. I hope not.

    In the meantime, what baffles my mind is with all this money, how come they still are asking people to donate shoes, food, clothes, computers, supplies, etc. If they can spend 29K where there is no benefit , why are they not looking for a shelter ( a large store front, office space, etc) where they can camp, stay warm, and conduct business.

    The big story that is being missed is, if the 99% of Americans knew how they were spending their donations, would they continue to donate ? It appears to that OWS does not appear to be worried about public sentiment, so they must be getting donations from elsewhere. So the question is who and is this movement what it appears to be ?

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