CORRECTIOS:
The author followed up with the correction that activists stormed the Israeli embassy twice in 2011, not 2012.
In regards to the January 25th, the author had not mentioned that it was after the activists arrived at Mustafa Mahmoud Square with their march on January 25 and found way more numbers there than they expected. As such, they decided to lead their march to Tahrir Square.
00:08 — Rusha Latif is an Egyptian-American researcher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work focuses on social movements and revolutions, particularly in the Middle East. Her book, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (2022), draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo during the 2011 uprising to examine activist agency in the absence of formal leadership.