A crowd of about 100 workers stood outside the Altawheed Wil Nour department store and chanted, “Come down, you cowards!”
They punched their fists in the air and gathered menacingly around a car trying to get through the traffic. Police looked on but did nothing.
“We are making legitimate demands,” said Mohamed Roshdy, 22, a salesman in the clothing department. He and the other protesters hoped the store owners inside the boarded-up building would hear their chants for higher pay and long-term job contracts.
The protests have not ended in Egypt. In the weeks since a massive street protest ousted President Hosni Mubarak, demonstrators gather nearly every day in one corner or another of the capital to demand better pay or job security.
Experts say a new culture of street demonstrations has arisen.
“Everybody thinks public authorities are weak now,” said Gamal Gawad Soltan, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “It is blackmailing public authorities.”
Egyptians are using the techniques of the rebellion to organize smaller protests with narrower aims, usually involving wages. Every day, activists send messages on Twitter with the latest news on street protests.
The government initially was reluctant to crack down on the protesters, but lately they have been exercising more authority, said Mohamed Kadry Said, a retired major general and military analyst.
The public and authorities have grown weary of regular protests in Tahrir Square that disrupt normal life and scare off tourists, a mainstay of Egypt’s economy.
“You need a strong hand to control all of this,” he said.
Sherif Fathy, 45, a street vendor near Tahrir Square, used to sell small children’s toys to tourists. Now he sells bumper stickers and small posters commemorating the rebellion, including a photo of the heads of Mubarak and his cronies superimposed on soccer uniforms. It’s titled Team Corruption and is popular among the protesters.
The army has been in control of the country since Mubarak’s ouster. On Saturday, Egyptians will vote on constitutional amendments to establish a basis for presidential and parliamentary elections later in the year.
The street protests appear to be an example of the unease Egyptians feel as the country makes the transition from decades of autocratic rule to some form of democracy.
“There has been a complete security vacuum,” said Rania Al Malky, editor of the English-language Daily News Egypt.
Street crime is up, Said and other analysts said. “Every day in the newspapers you read about kidnapping, even of children,” he said.
Egypt’s military is eager to hand over control to civilians and chafes at having to perform civilian functions, such as rebuilding a church that was burned during clashes between Muslims and Christians, according to Said. So protests go on as police and the military are reluctant to crack down and provoke further unrest. The government also is quick to cave in to demands, analysts say.
“They just found others did that and got benefits,” according to Said. “So they imitate it.”
The demands are putting enormous pressure on the government’s budget and the economy, Soltan said.
Mubarak had privatized a number of state industries and stimulated economic growth. Those changes could be in jeopardy. Most protesters are focused on using their new freedom to press for higher wages and benefits. That is not surprising in a country where one in five people live below the poverty line.
“They need money,” Said said. “They need food.”
A day before the department store protest, hundreds of members of an association of agriculture companies gathered before parliament to demand that the government take over the companies, which had been privatized.
Sobhy Gamil, a protester, said if the government owns the companies then workers will be guaranteed employment.
At the department store, protesters say management locked them out of the store in a dispute over job contracts.
Roshdy said this may be the only chance they have to voice their grievances because they don’t know what the future holds and whether Egypt will return to an autocracy.
“This is our only chance,” he said. “We don’t know what is coming next.”