(Getty Images, January 31, 2011)

(Getty Images, January 30, 2011)

It's about Representation

Today, Yemeni protestors went out into the streets of Sanaa to call for an end to social inequality, vote rigging, and the chokehold of president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ruling party.

In 1968, American civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin wrote, “We would be mistaken to think that the only desires of young Negroes today are to have a job, to have a decent house, to be well educated, to have medical care. All these things are very important, but deeper and more profound is the feeling of young Negroes today—through all classes, from the lumpenproletariat to the working poor, the working classes, the middle classes, and the intelligentsia—that the time has come when they should have power, a voice in the solution of problems which affect them.”

Today in Suez, 29-year-old glass factory worker Mohamed Fahim told a reporter, “It’s our right to choose our government ourselves. We have been living 29 years, my whole life, without being able to choose a president. I’ve grown bald, and Mubarak has stayed Mubarak,” he said, rubbing his bare scalp.

*AP Photo.