Carolyn January 31-February 4: More problems in Cairo

I hope everyone had a good day. Last week at Amnesty was really hectic because of the crisis that was continuing to grow in Egypt. On Tuesday I got to attend a protest that Amnesty was holding in front of the Egyptian embassy. As media relations intern, my job was to assist our representative in speaking with the press. I am obviously not qualified to make statements on behalf of Amnesty, but my job was to see which news and media outlets were in attendance, talk to the reporters and photographers, and help them to get the information they needed from our representative. It was a pretty interesting experience because there were huge news organizations there, like ABC and the Daily Show. We got to take a picture with Aasif Mandvi!

The craziest part of this experience was the fact that there were two Egyptian men (I think they worked at the embassy) who were trying to get on the news and make statements in support of the Egyptian government. I had to explain to the reporters that they were not affiliated with Amnesty International. It was really interesting to see how they reacted to the statements that Amnesty and the other human rights activists were making.

Throughout the week we also began working on press and media lists for the events Amnesty is going to have for its 50th Anniversary this year. It is going to be a huge event and it is going to take a lot of planning to complete. It will be an interesting change of pace to do projects related to musical artists and acts to recruit as opposed to my usual tasks like reading the news.

Late in the week two researchers from Amnesty International were detained in Cairo. They are safe now but they were detained for nearly two days and Amnesty was very concerned, especially considering what has been happening to American journalists in the past few days. The week went by at a slightly frenetic pace, and ended on Friday making last minute pitch calls to the major news networks in Washington, DC about a follow-up rally Amnesty was participating in on Saturday. Over the weekend there was an impressive spread in the New York Times that Amnesty helped to produce. It gives a comprehensive and easy to understand overview of the conflicts erupting in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/06/weekinreview/06marsh.html

I hope everyone has a great week!