{{Avenue Mohammed V, a wide street that runs directly through Rabat\u2019s centre-ville and past Morocco\u2019s parliamentary headquarters, is the site of nearly daily protests against the country\u2019s government.}}<\/p>\n
Living in Morocco in late 2012, most days I saw the protesters tussle with the police, grow bored, and disperse, laughing over the chase like American children playing tag during recess.<\/p>\n
But last November, I witnessed something different: hundreds of unsmiling protesters blocking both sides of the street, demanding government jobs in an economy with massive unemployment.<\/p>\n
The crowd screamed as 40 or so policemen rushed at them with heavy batons. A brazen man chanting phrases in Darija, Morocco\u2019s Arabic dialect, was hit hard in the leg and fell to the ground, his mouth stretched open in pain.<\/p>\n
A day later, the protest was written up in one of Morocco\u2019s largest papers, Assabah, with an inexplicable headline, \u201cProtesters Plan to Kill Policemen and Explode Military Barracks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Morocco is technically a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, the king holds all of the power, including power to dissolve parliament. Government control also extends to Assabah, and most of the public spaces in Morocco.<\/p>\n
But the country was not immune to the protest movements that have swept across North Africa and the Middle East over the past two years. In fact, on a single day in February 2011, tens of thousands of Moroccans took to the streets all over the country to challenge the king\u2019s power.<\/p>\n
And to hear that demonstration\u2019s leaders talk today, and to see the daily protests continue, the fervor behind the initial protest remains quietly, patiently alive.<\/p>\n
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{{Avenue Mohammed V, a wide street that runs directly through Rabat\u2019s centre-ville and past Morocco\u2019s parliamentary headquarters, is the site of nearly daily protests against the country\u2019s government.}} Living in Morocco in late 2012, most days I saw the protesters tussle with the police, grow bored, and disperse, laughing over the chase like American children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-7173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7173"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=7173"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=7173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}