The young Egyptians who brought down a president: MEMO in Conversation with Rusha Latif

Middle East Monitor Conversations

It has been 13 years since Egyptians took to the street and changed their political landscape, but who was behind the protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak? And what happened to the movement that forced him out?

11 February marks the 13th anniversary of the ousting of long-term Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. A popular uprising, known as the Arab Spring, began a few weeks earlier and the pressure of the street protests forced Mubarak to leave power. 2011 looked set to be the year Egypt entered a new democratic era, however, the 2013 coup against the country's first democratically elected President, Mohamed Morsi, soon shattered these hopes. The protests were lead by the Revolutionary Youth Council, but what was this movement and what happened to them? Joining us to answer this question is Rusha Latif. Rusha Latif is a researcher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A first-generation Egyptian American, she travelled to Cairo in 2011 to conduct ethnographic research on the uprising. Her interests include social movements and revolutions; the study of gender, class and race/ethnicity; Islamic studies; and Middle Eastern studies. She is the author of Tahrir's Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution.