Various causes have been cited for the uprising of January 25, 2011 in Egypt. Economic and demographic reasons loom large in analyses. It is likely that these factors did play major roles in bringing people out on January 25 and before. However, analyses that overlook the role of authoritarianism in Egypt are incomplete. Specifically, the role of the police, the agents of the regime, needs to be considered among the major causes of the uprising. Police brutality angered Egyptians sufficiently that they took to the streets in protest several times before 2011. In many or most cases, they protested economic conditions such as low wages and rising food prices. In most or all cases, whether or not their calls were eventually answered and to what degree, police brutality materialized. The police prevented what could have been the safety valve, protest, of popular indignation from opening. Moreover, those protests that were specifically against police brutality met the same fate, frustrating those seeking justice. Many observers say police brutality was the main reason for the protests of January 25, 2011. (Ross; Ali) When online social media such as Facebook gave young Egyptians an outlet for their fury, the number of people understanding and believing in the need for change swelled. Social media alone cannot cause revolutions, but they can spread awareness of common problems, focus anger on a target and rally people around an event. Among the common problems were police repression, the target focused on was the regime of Hosni Mubarak, and the event promoted was the protest of January 25. This research essay places the January 25 protests in a line of demonstrations against the state in Egypt. It proposes two arguments. First, that police brutality was one of the main causes of the uprising, and second, that while the use of social media may not have been the single or main causal factor in the downfall of Mubarak, it was instrumental in making January 25, 2011 the beginning of a successful movement. To make these points, this essay considers the significance of the protests of the decade preceding the Day of Rage, some of the movements that made them happen, how the police inflamed public sentiment, how the April 6, 2008 Mahalla strike and the death of Khaled Said set the country on the road to revolution, and how social media such as blogs and Facebook brought all the key factors together. Opposition to the Mubarak regime became widespread in Egypt at the end of 2000, when its apparent complicity with (or at least, consent to) the repression of Palestinians during the second intifada led to a campaign against the Egyptian government characterized by tens of thousands of protesters in Cairo and daily protests and sit-ins by university students. (El Amine) The US-led invasion of Iraq prompted more mass demonstrations in 2003 and 2004. During one, some 30,000 protesters fought with police and even burned down a billboard of Mubarak. (Ibid.) Many of the veteran protesters from these and earlier movements formed Kefaya, the Egyptian Movement for Change, in 2004. Though Kefaya never became a mass movement, their protesting and civil disobedience campaigns earned them considerabl