Taking out the trash: Youth clean up Egypt after Mubarak

, thousands of Egyptians flooded Tahrir Square to celebrate the previous night's ouster of Husni Mubarak, their country's dictator of 30 years. It was an unusually bright and clear-skied Cairo Saturday, full of promise of a new Egypt. From atop the October 6 bridge that spans the 'Abd al-Mun'im Riyad portion of Tahrir, where just nine days earlier government-paid attackers had rained down ammunition upon pro-democracy demonstrators in the most brutal battle of the revolution, one could see dozens of crews of young people cleaning the square. Many of the middle-class youth wore surgical masks and gloves as they swept the streets of their thick layer of dust and pushed into piles the chunks of pavement that had broken under the weight of army tanks as well as the hammering of protesters making projectiles for self-defense. With large black plastic bags brought from home or purchased by largely youth-led NGOs, they collected food and drink containers, old newspapers, empty cigarette packages and other remnants of the tent city sit-in. Other volunteers washed off or painted over the spontaneous graffiti that protesters had written on buildings, sidewalks and bridges. Toward the end of the afternoon , human chains formed to protect the curbs that were Jessica Winegar is assistant professor of anthropology at Northwestern University.