SEA CHANGE

My favorite anecdote about the recent protests in Lebanon has to be the video of protesters serenading a toddler with Baby Shark to quell his anxiety about the throngs of people around him. Like the protests themselves, the story so aptly illustrates the ability of the Lebanese to take despair and make it hopeful. As writer Rabih Alameddine observes in his Baby Shark article for the New York Times, The opposing ideas of hope and despair seem to be held simultaneously by most Lebanese without much cognitive dissonance.

I am clearly not Lebanese, because I constantly entertain conflicted feelings living here and they always make me feel uncomfortable. Lebanon has challenged me to walk with one foot in hope and one in despair regularly. I feel disgusted by the pollution, the driving, the misogyny, and in the next breath humbled by the hospitality of someone at the next table, the Call to Prayer reverberating around the city, or the line of vegetables at the Saturday market. As humans we much prefer to put things in boxes, good or bad, when of course reality is much more nuanced.

These protests and their wake are no exception. I feel safe walking around my neighborhood and shopping at the markets. Demonstrations continue to be generally peaceful and celebratory. As one friend described, ‘they feel like street fairs’. We have plenty of access to food, water, electricity, and Internet. If you want to worry about someone, the folks in California are more deserving. Simultaneously, an undercurrent of collective anxiety swirls around my ankles and makes it hard to concentrate. Many wonder if the positive vibes will last. It helps to get out and do something different.

This morning, our family drove to downtown Beirut to help clean up. Protesters numbering in the hundreds of thousands create a lot of trash. The community organization Muwatin Lebnene (@muwatinlebnene) manages the sorting of the garbage in an effort to extract as much recyclable material as possible. A volunteer briefed us, handed us sturdy gloves, reusable trash bags, masks, and put into groups to collect and sift.  

If no one could have predicted the scale and tenor of these protests, then surely no one could have predicted the scale and tenor of the clean up. In a country where people regularly drop plastic water bottles into the Mediterranean rather than walk the 10 paces to the trash bin, this morning saw hundreds of volunteers picking through pizza crusts and cigarette butts to find soda cans and water bottles. It is the kind of thing I might expect to see in San Francisco or at a liberal arts college in New England. Not in Beirut. It is the kind of thing that makes me believe maybe change is possible here.

I am not the only one. For many years, there has been despair in Lebanon over the way the government is structured, its much-exposed corrupted finances, and the resulting decline in the economy. The recent wildfires in the south and a proposed tax on Internet phone calls ignited the largest and most inclusive protests that the country has ever seen. It is inspiring to see the photos of crowds in Lebanese red that include all ages, genders and faiths. Or the human chain formed Sunday afternoon from the south to the north of the country.

Sadly, the statistics are against the protesters. A 2017 Harvard University study found that 20 years ago, 70% of political protests seeking systemic political change succeeded. By 2016, the rate had dropped to 30%. Click here for a more reader-friendly discussion of the study as it relates to current protests.

But I am certain that if there is any country that can rescue hope from the jaws of such despair, it is Lebanon.