Egypt: "a real uprising against the Brotherhood"

Hundreds of thousands participated in “Red Card Friday” protests across Egypt. The opposition to Morsi has sustained its momentum and spread deeper into Egypt with perhaps hundreds of thousands protesting in cities and towns across the country.  
 
The picture that Mubarak and now the Muslim Brotherhood try to paint of political opposition is that it only exists to any extent in Cairo. “Tahrir is not Egypt” is a slogan that has been used many times since the January 25 revolution in 2011. It is true that the Muslim Brotherhood has historically been very strong in many provincial and rural centres of Egypt. But that support may be in decline if the spread of protests is any indication.
 
Most of the major demonstrations are in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and the militant union town of Mahalla where the movement that led to Mubarak’s overthrow began in 2008. However, today there were also demonstrations of hundreds and of thousands in smaller centres. There were, for instance, demonstrations in villages in the province of Beheira, historically a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold. In Sharqiya, President Morsi’s hometown, there were major clashes between oppositionists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters near his family home.
 
In Damietta, farmers burned images of Morsi. The farmer syndicate leader walked out of the Constituent Assembly after they failed to include the rights of farmers. There have also been protests at the Morsi’s failure to pass a law forgiving debts for Egypt’s poverty stricken farmers.
 
"Egypt is witnessing a real uprising against the Brotherhood,” Egyptian socialist journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy posted on Twitter. 
 
This was originally published by the blog RedBedHead