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Gigi Ibrahim
Gigi Ibrahim in May 2011
Ibrahim in 2011
Born1986 or 1987 (age 37–38)
Long Beach, California, United States
NationalityAmerican
Alma materThe American University in Cairo
Occupations

Gigi Ibrahim (also mentioned as Gihan Ibrahim, born 1986 or 1987) is an Egyptian-American citizen journalist and activist. During the Egyptian revolution in 2011, she reported events about the protests and became a face of the events for much of the Western media.

Ibrahim was born in Long Beach, California to Egyptian parents although she soon moved to Egypt, where she lived until she was 14. Her family subsequently returned to California, where she began attending a local Catholic high school. She graduated from high school in 2005, attending Orange Coast College at first before transferring to The American University in Cairo in 2008. She became involved with the Revolutionary Socialists organization and graduated in 2010 with a degree in political science.

Ibrahim became an organizer of the protests in 2011 and used Twitter to document events that took place during the revolution. Her tweets additionally helped human rights groups to document arrests and state violence during the revolution. Western news media treated her as a face of the revolution. After the 2013 coup d'état, Ibrahim chose to stay in Egypt and continue her involvement in activism and protests. She later co-founded a shoe manufacturing company in Cairo. Her younger brother is Ahmed Hassanein, an American football player for Boise State University.

Early life and education

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Ibrahim was born in Long Beach, California to Egyptian parents[1] in 1986 or 1987.[2] When she was a year old, the family moved back to Egypt. After her mother died, she went back to California[1] with her father and sister in 2001;[3] she was 14 at the time.[1] She enrolled in a local Catholic school as a freshman.[3]

While Ibrahim was in her second week of classes at the school, the September 11 attacks occurred. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents searched the Ibrahims' home, explaining that a neighbor had called a tipline to report the family. The neighbor's concerns were the fact that Ibrahim's uncle sometimes walked outside at night while speaking Arabic on phone calls, and a U-Haul truck had recently been parked outside their house. As the only Muslim in her class, Ibrahim was also asked to give a presentation about Islam at her school despite the fact that her family was not very religious. The experience led Ibrahim to realize that her life was going to be different because she was Muslim and Egyptian.[3]

Over the years that followed, Ibrahim gained an increasing level of interest in politics.[3] She became involved in a group that advocated for the rights of illegal immigrants to the United States in response to what she saw as discriminatory enforcement of immigration law by local police officers, and was also involved in pro-Palestinian activism. However, she was largely unaware of political events in Egypt at the time, and visited Egypt only rarely.[4]

Ibrahim graduated Cornelia Connelly High School in 2005,[5] and then attended Orange Coast College.[1] She transferred to The American University in Cairo[6][7] in 2008[1] at the age of 22, where she became involved in the local politics of Egypt and participated in protests throughout 2009 and 2010. During this time, she became involved with the Revolutionary Socialists,[4] of which she is a member.[8] She graduated in 2010 with a degree in political science.[1]

Involvement in Egyptian politics

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We coordinated the timing, place and the content of the demands ... We started with 100 people, then we became thousands and thousands of people chanting against the regime

– Ibrahim in the UNESCO Courier, 2011[9]
Ibrahim waving a small Egyptian flag in a crowd at a February 2011 protest
Ibrahim at a protest in February 2011

Ibrahim told Al Jazeera that her political activism began when she started talking to people who were involved in the labour movement, and that her family was uncomfortable with her going to protests.[10] She became involved in the Egyptian revolution of 2011[2][11] as an organizer,[7][12] additionally engaging in citizen journalism by using social media including Twitter while attending protests[13][8] "to spread accurate information and paint a picture at the ground".[14] Ibrahim and other Egyptian youth on Twitter played a leading role in organizing the events of January 25, 2011.[9] Her tweets also helped to document arrests and state violence[15] for human rights groups.[16]

In October 2011, Ibrahim reported that she had been briefly arrested while filming a strike action by public transport workers in Cairo, and was released after agreeing to delete her footage.[17]

By winter of 2012, Ibrahim had more than 30,000 followers on Twitter, and was active in protests against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.[18]

Reception by Western media

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Time magazine cover with the headline "The Generation Changing the World" and a posed photo of a group of activists including Ibrahim
Time magazine cover from February 28, 2011, with Ibrahim at bottom left.

Ibrahim became a face of the events in Egypt for much of the media.[19] She regularly appeared on CNN,[3] sometimes live from the 2011 protests, and additionally reported live from the protests on Al Jazeera.[20] Her political views were rarely mentioned in Western media.[19]

Judy Woodruff described Ibrahim as "a symbol of the uprising" on PBS NewsHour.[21] On The Daily Show, Ibrahim told Jon Stewart that she initially joined the protests because of a class she took at the American University in Cairo called "Social Mobilization under Authoritarian Regimes."[22] The New York Times conducted an interview with her using Skype,[23] and a February 2011 Frontline episode titled "Gigi's Revolution" examined her relationship with her elite Egyptian family and "her attempts to convince her family of the righteousness of her cause."[24] On February 14, 2011, she appeared on an Al Jazeera English talk show alongside Alaa Abd El-Fattah and Mohamad Waked to discuss the events in Egypt after the fall of Hosni Mubarak.[25] She was also featured on the cover of the February 28, 2011 issue of Time magazine, later criticizing the related article in that issue by saying that the West "needs to believe that we could not have [made revolution possible] without their digital toys."[26]

After the 2013 coup in Egypt

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In July 2013, many militants from the revolution chose to leave after the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état, but Ibrahim stayed.[27] As of July 2013, Ibrahim was living in Nasr City and continued to participate in activism and protests.[28] In August 2013, she was part of a group called the Third Square that met in Sphinx Square in Giza to protest both the military government and the Muslim Brotherhood.[29]

After the 2013 coup, Ibrahim's husband went into exile because he wanted to remain a journalist, while she founded a shoe manufacturing company in Cairo.[27] In January 2021, she told Jeune Afrique that it was dangerous to protest and to be a journalist who didn't work on behalf of the regime, explaining that "We now live under a dictator worse than Mubarak [...] Any protest is punishable by sanctions. The protest is now being done underground."[27]

Shoe manufacturing career

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After the 2013 coup in Egypt, Ibrahim founded a shoe manufacturing company in Cairo.[27] A September 2021 article in The National identified Ibrahim as the co-owner of Cairo shoe manufacturing company Bulga, founded in 2016, along with artisan Mona Sorour. Ibrahim manages advertising, public relations and sales for the company, which is named after the traditional balgha. The shoes are designed through collaboration with indigenous groups in various regions of Egypt and manufactured in multiple workshops across the country, using exclusively Egyptian materials and labor; Ibrahim cited the decline of traditional craftsmanship resulting from the increase in mass-produced items as a major factor in the creation of Bulga.[30]

Ibrahim has a United States passport and could leave Egypt. In October 2021, she explained her decision to remain in the country to The New Yorker, saying that "Maybe here I'm a second-class citizen as an Egyptian woman, but [in the U.S.] I'm a second-class terrorist."[3]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Sandy et al. 2013.
  2. ^ a b Ourdan 2011.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Stack 2021.
  4. ^ a b Abu Hijleh 2011, p. 11.
  5. ^ "Gigi Ibrahim '05". Cornelia Connelly High School. Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  6. ^ Mackey, Robert (January 27, 2011). "Interview With an Egyptian Blogger". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 17, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  7. ^ a b "Egyptian activist to speak at this year's CWA". University of Colorado Boulder. March 16, 2011. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  8. ^ a b Fleishman, Jeffrey (February 14, 2012). "After revolution in Egypt, women's taste of equality fades". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 24, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  9. ^ a b Mellor 2014, p. 91.
  10. ^ Naib, Fatma (February 19, 2011). "Women of the revolution". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  11. ^ "Egypt unrest: Alert as mass protests loom". BBC News. January 28, 2011. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  12. ^ Smet, Brecht De (2015). A Dialectical Pedagogy of Revolt: Gramsci, Vygotsky, and the Egyptian Revolution. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. p. 309. ISBN 978-90-04-26266-9. OCLC 900277006.
  13. ^ Allen, Bennett (April 4, 2011). "Citizen Journalism: Life on the Ground at the Egyptian Revolution". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on April 13, 2016. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  14. ^ Rogers, Tony (January 28, 2011). "Citizen Journalist Gigi Ibrahim Uses Tools of the Web to Spread News of Cairo Protests". About.com. Archived from the original on July 1, 2012. Retrieved May 21, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  15. ^ Hidalgo, Alonso. "Redes sociales, política y activismo" [Social media, politics and activism] (PDF). Quehacer (in Spanish). Centro de Estudios y Promocion del Desarrollo: 99. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 7, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  16. ^ England, Phil (May 2011). "A digital revolution in Egypt and beyond". New Internationalist. ISSN 0305-9529. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  17. ^ Tarek, Sherif (October 2, 2011). "Activist Gigi Ibrahim to keep filming drivers' protests despite military arrest". Ahram Online. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  18. ^ Woods, Elliott D. (2012). "The Faces of Tahrir Square: Last spring's protests were only the beginning of a much longer struggle". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 88 (1): 98. ISSN 0042-675X. JSTOR 26446367. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  19. ^ a b Tufekci, Zeynep (July 2013). ""Not This One": Social Movements, the Attention Economy, and Microcelebrity Networked Activism". American Behavioral Scientist. 57 (7): 858–859. doi:10.1177/0002764213479369. ISSN 0002-7642. S2CID 145744470. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved May 22, 2021 – via Sage Publishing.
  20. ^ Bebawi 2014, p. 18.
  21. ^ Hermida, Alfred (2016). Tell Everyone: Why We Share and Why It Matters. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. pp. 106–109. ISBN 978-0-385-67958-9. OCLC 957224135.
  22. ^ Anderson, Lisa (2012). "Too Much Information? Political Science, the University, and the Public Sphere". Perspectives on Politics. 10 (2). American Political Science Association: 389. doi:10.1017/S1537592712000722. ISSN 1537-5927. JSTOR 41479557. S2CID 145613815. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  23. ^ Bebawi 2014, pp. 131–132.
  24. ^ "Gigi's Revolution" (video). PBS Frontline. February 22, 2011. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  25. ^ Bebawi 2014, p. 64.
  26. ^ Srinivasan, Ramesh (2017). "5. Taking Back Our Media". Whose Global Village?. New York University Press. p. 221. doi:10.18574/nyu/9781479873906.003.0009. ISBN 9781479873906. Archived from the original on May 24, 2021. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  27. ^ a b c d Jachmann, Luis (January 25, 2021). "Égypte – Gigi Ibrahim: " La contestation se fait désormais dans la clandestinité "" [Egypt – Gigi Ibrahim: "The protest is now done underground"]. Jeune Afrique (in French). Archived from the original on March 17, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  28. ^ "Gigi Ibrahim Discusses What Happens Next in Egypt with Tim Pool". Vice News. July 5, 2013. Archived from the original on August 1, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  29. ^ Parvaz, D. (August 23, 2013). "Between Tahrir and Rabaa: The Third Square". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  30. ^ Tabikha, Kamal (September 2, 2021). "How fashion label Bulga is reviving traditional Egyptian shoes with an artisanal touch". The National. Archived from the original on October 2, 2021. Retrieved October 2, 2021.

Works cited

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