Continued protests

Here is a portrait of one of the most active democracy fighters: Hossam al-Hamalawy


"The job is unfinished, we got rid of (Hosni) Mubarak but we didn't get rid of his dictatorship, we didn't get rid of the state security police," he told The Associated Press while sipping strong Arabic coffee in a traditional downtown cafe that weeks before had been the scene of street battles.

Egypt's long-suppressed labor movement found a voice in December 2006, when the 26,000 workers at Mahalla Spinning and Weaving, north of Cairo, went on strike. The government acquiesced to their demands, but soon flurries of copy cat strikes were erupting across the country at other public and private sector factories.

El-Hamalawy was first covering the disturbances as a journalist, then helping to mobilize them as an activist, working with veteran shop floor leaders at the factories to help organize the laborers and, most importantly, get their message out to the rest of the world.

El-Hamalawy maintains that it was the eruption of strikes in the final days of the Tahrir Square uprising that prompted the generals to finally push out Mubarak after the protest seemed to have degenerated into a waiting game.

El-Hamalawy's zeal has mellowed little over the years, and just like when he was talking about overthrowing the regime 10 years before it happened, his demands today seem a bit unrealistic — like investigating the now-ruling generals for their own links to corruption in the Mubarak era.

But then a decade ago, no one would have thought Egypt's quiescent workers and civil servants would be taking to the streets.

"There is a revolutionary mood in the country and you need to push for those strikes," he said. "If you hold them back now we are actually screwed — those who carry out half a revolution dig their own graves.