Revolution in Lebanon: From the Creative Frontlines
Since October 2019, demonstrators have flooded the streets of Lebanon as part of a grassroots movement against corruption, climate denial, big finance, and government failure. Civil society organizations are now providing people with everything from food and protection to street cleaning and work. From one crisis to another, Laura talks with Lebanese activist/artist Dayna Ash who founded and runs Haven for Artists, one of the few safe spaces for LGBTQI+ people and women in the region. Her experience of grassroots organizing in a meltdown during the revolution in Lebanon contains lessons for us all.
“There’s a misconception that we are looked at with oppression, and yes we are oppressed, but we’re also fighting back.”
Guest
Dayna Ash is a cultural activist and founder/director of Haven for Artists in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2019, she was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women for 2019. She is the recipient of the 2020 Woman of Distinction Award from United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Transcript — The Revolution in Lebanon: From the Creative Frontlines
Laura Flanders:
Economic meltdown, political corruption and government collapse. Since in the Arab Spring style uprising began in Lebanon last fall, activists had to find ways, to meet civil society’s needs, and keep people safe. In the process, they’ve collaborated in cross-class, cross-religious, cross-cultural ways that were barely imaginable in the country’s civil war, just a few decades back. Might the experience of Lebanon in crisis, have lessons for the rest of us? I’ll talk with Dayna Ash, who was to receive the Commission on the Status of Women, Women of Distinction Award, at the United nations this March, for her work with Haven for Artists. Haven is one of the few safe spaces run by, with, and for LGBTQI people, and women in the Middle East region, and in this crisis it’s become even more significant than that. Dayna Ash is my guest, fresh from Beirut next. This is The Laura Flanders Show, the place where the people who say, “It can’t be done.” Take a back seat, to the people who are doing it. Welcome.
Laura Flanders:
(Music)
Laura Flanders:
Dayna, welcome, and I hate to make you do this, because it’s kind of remedial education for the rest of us, but in a nutshell, can you describe what is happening, and has been happening in Lebanon? Is the comparison to the Arab Spring accurate, fair, right?
Dayna Ash:
In the sense of being able to give people who’ve never heard about the issues that we’re facing, maybe it is the best way, but now, it’s extremely different in the sense that it’s very grassroots, and the movement in itself is for a better society, and breaking the barriers of fear, as we had been kind of structured into whether it be religious or regional.
Laura Flanders:
If we were to beam into Beirut today, or any other city, you can mention, what would we find? What would we see? What would it feel like?
Dayna Ash:
People have finally unified. You find a lot of people… the revolution is no longer just on the streets. It’s in everything they do. It’s from going to the groceries, and going to the bank, and interacting with their neighbors. We never used to be political, in a sense of at least our generation, we would stay clear of it, because we were a little afraid of the war that we had, and the anxiety that was given to us by our families. Now we talk about it all the time. We were never allowed to talk about politics on the table, and now if you don’t talk politics, you’re not invited to the dinner table.
Laura Flanders:
You say we, but there’s also a you in this, there’s an I in this. Talk about yourself, because you have spent half of your life in the U.S., right?
Dayna Ash:
Yes, I grew up the first part of my life in California, and then I moved to Lebanon when I was around 16 years old, and it was a very interesting kind of a culture, to readjust to, because I was in a sense still, very much an Arab in my identity, but growing up here, you have a different set of thinking, and how you structure your life. When we moved down there, it was interesting to see how long it would take me to actually adjust, and it didn’t take too long. The City was quite embracing, in the fact that it was lacking so much, that you can find your place in any way you can.
Laura Flanders:
When you say that things have changed even at the level of getting your groceries, describe that for us.
Dayna Ash:
We never talk politics, and you used to walk into spaces and you would have a political leaders picture in there. We have a lot of different sects in Lebanon, and everyone follows their leader, and that’s the region, and that’s the religion, and everything is just kind of runs queue to this. Now it’s not like that. The pictures have been removed, and when you walk in, it’s usually the grocer complaining equally as much as you. And that’s not something we expected. They never gave a positive look towards activism, or trying to change what we were living. Now it’s like, “You must go down.” And a lot of the older generation keeps pushing us down onto the streets, which is great.
Laura Flanders:
Are you excited to be part of this revolution? How does it feel?
Dayna Ash:
I have never been able to fully comprehend what it’s like to be a Lebanese until now. October 17, not just solidified my identity, but solidified my understanding, and my want to stay in the country. We were all struggling. We were all working very hard. We worked three, four jobs to be able to make ends meet. We have extremely high rent in real estate with $450 a month minimum wage. The country just makes absolutely no sense. And now we’ve come to terms with the fact that, the only way that we can change this, is if we stick together, and it’s become a very, very active role, that every single person is doing. You were asking how we organize now, we met in the squares, and we’ve never left each other. So now everybody is interlinked from area to area, from region to region, and we communicate via WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook to constantly link these massive groups of hundreds of people, just sending information back and forth, and that was something that we never had before, which is the equal dissemination of information.
Laura Flanders:
And how does it feel?
Dayna Ash:
Like it’s time for a revolution?
Laura Flanders:
Now, I would imagine that some things have changed, because money has changed. People, when I said I was going to talk to you about Lebanon, they said, “Well, as far as I understand it, there’s no money. How could it means of exchange.”
Dayna Ash:
Absolutely not. The money has disappeared. It disappeared a long time ago, and I think that that was the facade that our government was able to pull off for so long that-
Laura Flanders:
Or was that just a euphemism, are you just talking conceptually?
Dayna Ash:
… No, no, no. We’re in negative 60 billion I think.
Laura Flanders:
So reach in your pocket, you go to the ATM?
Dayna Ash:
We can’t withdraw money from the ATM. I think it’s $50 a month now that we’re allowed to withdraw, and our currency was originally packed to the dollar, so it was 1,500 Liras to every one dollar, which was the financial engineering, that they had concocted for 30 years, and then suddenly we are at 2,750 which means our value of currency has dropped by 50%, and that means our salaries have dropped by 50%, but the cost of living has increased, because we import 90% of what we use and consume in the country.
Laura Flanders:
So it’s nice to have political conversations with your grocer, but where are you meeting?
Dayna Ash:
Well we try as best as we can, so that in the end, the country is not completely falling apart. We do grow a lot. The country has never invested in its own sectors, it’s never cared about investing in its people. It was always about creating deals with the rest of the world, and our politicians, that was their way I think of pocketing a bunch of the deals themselves, or where they’ll be contracting or otherwise.
Laura Flanders:
You have an enormous number of banks for a fairly small country.
Dayna Ash:
Yeah, I think it was around 150, something like that. 130 to 150 banks in 10,500, 10,452 meters squared.
Laura Flanders:
Why so many banks?
Dayna Ash:
Because our politicians own them. All of our politicians have shares within all of these banks. Originally we were supposed to be… we were a country that produced a lot. And we produced silk, and we produced the royal color that’s known for royalty, was actually produced in Lebanon. I think it was around 1920s, they decided that we were going to be a banking country, thank you. And so they started shifting into the banking sector and that was where everything went. And the Financial Engineering was that he was going to give high interest rates to our diaspora, so that they invest money into the country. But if there’s money coming into the country, but there’s no circulation of money, which means the money is not actually accumulating, and it’s just getting pocketed by all of these private sector banks. In the end you’re going to go into a massive recession,
Laura Flanders:
Which is exactly what’s happened. This spring, I think Lebanon defaulted on its loans to International Finance, for the first time. $4.6 billion owed this year.
Dayna Ash:
The default in a way, what they’re saying is going to be pushing into creating a new strategy, to restructure our debt, and see how we’re going to pay it back. But the Lebanese citizens are saying, , we will not pay this debt. You have to pay it because we’re aware of your bank accounts, and your numbers and your corporations, and how many banks you own, and yet we’re the ones starving. So we are not going to be the ones to hold up that.
Laura Flanders:
The reason I’m so excited to talk to you, is that people wouldn’t have figured this out by now, is that I hear as if it were a little bit of a news dispatch from a possible future, where one has entirely financialized one’s economy, one has allowed politicians to accrue the benefit of power and money from that financialization, and people are suffering?
Dayna Ash:
Absolutely.
Laura Flanders:
Then comes the uprising part. What was it that triggered the uprising per se?
Dayna Ash:
Well, there were multiple factors, they build up to it. Other than the fact that we’ve been building up for 30 years, in particular there were the fires that engulfed all of Lebanon. They burned half of the Chouf and-
Laura Flanders:
This was at the same time, people may have seen the pictures from Australia-
Dayna Ash:
Exactly.
Laura Flanders:
… but there was similar fires happening where you are the beautiful cedars of Lebanon-
Dayna Ash:
Were half scorched, like most of the mountains were really just really . The biggest, I think moment for us was when a reporter was up in Chouf, and she started crying on national television saying, “I can’t believe I’m hearing people screaming in their houses.” And our government didn’t react to actually volunteer firefighters, including Palestinian firefighters, volunteered and went and did this. Most of the region was just local neighbors, going out and trying to turn this fire off. We had three helicopters, that we had been gifted and we needed to just do maintenance on them, which I think it was around two or three million or something like that, and at some point, one of the governments donated another 13 million for maintenance, and then the 13 million disappeared, and the helicopters were never maintained. That was like a big slap to everybody’s face. We always knew there was corruption. We always were aware of how much stealing there was, but we weren’t aware of just the amount of incompetence, that was riddling our entire structure.
Laura Flanders:
Incompetence. Another word that seems very familiar to it. The other thing that I want us to mention before we get into the Haven, and your award, and what is flowering in the context of this resistance, is of course the refugee crisis, which we hear a certain amount about. Lebanon has been one of the countries to take millions, or at least about a million refugees just from Syria. We’re not talking about Palestine, we’re not talking about some that have been there earlier, migrant workers, but just Syrian refugees. What pressure is that putting on the people, and the government?
Dayna Ash:
Well, in my opinion, I don’t think there is pressure, because the government should be adequate enough to know how to handle that situation. They opened the doors, they need to be able to handle it. If they are allowing these people to come in, they need to present them with some kind of standard of living. The United Nations is working there. UNHCR, all of them work there. And there are deals with the government. I just don’t think the government cares enough to negotiate the best deals.
Laura Flanders:
In the context of all of this, you are running a safe space for women and LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning people in the middle of Beirut.
Dayna Ash:
Yeah.
Laura Flanders:
For artists, but also a safe space for women and for people, well, you tell me what’s the status of LGBTQI people, in Lebanon today?
Dayna Ash:
Oh, that’s my favorite subject. We have a law called 534, which sends us, or it’s called the Unnatural Act. So if in any way we are deemed unnatural, which is LGBTQI in their opinion, we can face up to a year in jail. And now this has been negated sometimes by great judges who have read the law and go, “This makes no sense. And it’s not applicable in accordance to our constitution.” But most judges don’t go down that route, and there have been a lot of issues, whether it be with the law itself, but it’s also the social aspects of it. Even if they were to absolve this law, we still need to work a lot on how people perceive LGBTQI in Lebanon, and how we can overcome that. But 534, is pretty much a very… It’s a painful number for us to handle. And I think those three numbers are probably the things that we can’t really comprehend either.
Laura Flanders:
So why an art center?
Dayna Ash:
I believe the intersection of art and activism, is the pillars of change for society. I think that’s the best way for us to be able to, not just combine efforts, and our research, and our knowledge, but to be able to disseminate this information in a way that’s accessible, and that’s understandable. We want to reach the most amount of people, and it’s not just about reaching people so that they know what we’re doing, but then so they know what’s happening to them. Because most of the people I think in this world are not aware, of how everything affects them, and just how far, and how much one particular thing, that domino effect, how that can really destroy their life, somewhere down the line. And with Haven, we always, viewed our work as necessary, because we also need expression.
Dayna Ash:
And in that we had the non-confrontational essence of just being ourselves, in the artistic realm. Working with activists, we’re able to exchange these tools, so that we can create great campaigns that outreach and create more of a movement, so that artists also have access to these activists to get proper research and information before they create a piece.
Laura Flanders:
There’s a beautiful film available on YouTube, made by your friend Tanya Sophie-
Dayna Ash:
Yes. She’s a wonderful director.
Laura Flanders:
… about Haven.
Dayna Ash:
Yes.
Laura Flanders:
Let’s take a little look.
Speaker 3:
Do you identify as an Arab woman, as a lesbian woman? Can you say that?
Dayna Ash:
Yes. This will be the first time I say it on camera. I identify as a lesbian woman. I identify as a lesbian Arab woman. And I Got tattoos. My name is Dayna Ash, and I’m the Executive Director of Haven for Artists.
Speaker 3:
And what is Haven?
Dayna Ash:
Haven as the only LGBTQI and women’s safe space, in all of Beirut in which we can be extremely open and extremely free. Our initial intention is to be an all inclusive art and cultural space, but we are here to support every other NGO, we are here to support every artist, we are here to support every activist, but we know who needs it most.
Dayna Ash:
(Music)
Dayna Ash:
We always give out flowers on women’s day, and then we always buy extra so that we can give women every other day, and say, “Every day is Women’s day.” People that do come here intentionally, are people coming here in order to be free, in order to express themselves freely, to be themselves, to dress in any way or form. That they would like to converse, and not feel pretentious to love and not feel hated. And the community just grew and grew on the basis that the space was there. Being raised in the States, made me arrogant and ignorant, to the strife of others. And when I came to my country, and I thought that I can be liberal and free, and out and proud, and all of that, and I was faced with my family saying, “No you cannot. No you cannot.” That’s when I realized that this was a privilege that I was given, that my country should be giving its citizens as well, and that’s when I began working on Haven.
Laura Flanders:
In that film, you come out as a lesbian and you say it’s your first time.
Dayna Ash:
Yeah. .
Laura Flanders:
I’m speaking as a fellow lesbian, I’m proud of you and excited for you for doing that, but in the context of this war was not like the ideal time to come out. Or was it?
Dayna Ash:
Well, I’m very outspoken about who I am and-
Laura Flanders:
But that’s out and then there’s out on video.
Dayna Ash:
… Yeah, that was a moment. But I think it was also Tanya, the way she is in the way she presents herself, and her being in essence, a great filmmaker. It made me feel extremely comfortable. And in the end, I wanted people to understand that there are Arab lesbians, and that there’s misconception that we are looked at with oppression, and yes we are oppressed, but we’re also fighting back. We are proud in a different sense than how the West can be proud. And our job is to continue to change that misconception. It’s a bridge, so that we can create dialogue between all of the world.
Laura Flanders:
And how is that work intersecting, because it didn’t intersect in your body, and your daily life, and who you are, with the resistance around the regime, and the militarization, and the financialization, and the poverty, and the lack of food.
Dayna Ash:
Well, I always say that we have to fight a revolution on all fronts. There’s no such thing as, “Well, we’ll do this first, and then we’ll work on this.” If we continue to do that, then people will always take advantage, and prioritize their own needs, over the needs of everyone else’s. I believe that freedom is for every single one of us to design, and not for one single person to define. Therefore, it is our responsibility to ensure that we are fighting on all fronts, and making sure that everyone is moving, even if one inch at a time, together.
Laura Flanders:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So what concrete role is Haven playing in the people who are part of Haven, in this context of now?
Dayna Ash:
In the revolution in itself?
Laura Flanders:
Yes.
Dayna Ash:
We, as Haven, we… first of all, we’ve been on strike for five months. Our organization refuses to work, we actually closed our doors during the revolution, and didn’t say anything, we just moved our furniture, and went back to the streets. It was four of us that moved in the entire space, and we were in our clothes ready to go back with our tear gas, and tear gas masks, just waiting. So we moved the house and we went straight back. And that was mainly because, at that point, people were on the streets. And that’s where they were going to need to stay. So there wasn’t this much need for the space to continue opening its doors in that sense, especially since we ourselves were on the street, and on the front lines. The entire team is very involved in the revolution, in their own way, each in their own manner.
Dayna Ash:
And it has nothing to do with just Haven. Haven is there to support everyone who comes forward. So any activist that comes in and says I need haven’s, this, this or this, Haven is there to offer it. But Haven in itself as an entity is not functioning programs. Its artists and its people are functioning on the ground.
Laura Flanders:
And what’s changing or is anything changing, in relationship of the LGBT community, and the rest of the community in resistance, as people come together around basic needs?
Dayna Ash:
Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this amount of queer graffiti. It was beautiful because there’s yes, queer here and the queer is built Beirut, and it’s everywhere in the city. But mainly it’s the fact that we got to a point where before being queer was, or being LGBTQ, was an offensive term. So if you want to offend someone, you would call them that. And I think in America, you guys have the-
Laura Flanders:
Same word.
Dayna Ash:
… same word. You have that translation, that word. So they would do that. Now we’ve created, and it came out and organically. People that usually would be extremely offensive, they were always against LGBT, have gone to a point where they’re in the middle of the protest, using the struggle return to refer to one of our politicians. And then the LGBT community within that same protest would scream at them and say, “No, this is not a curse word.” And they slowly stopped using that. It’s not 100% blanketing, but it is a massive progress, from what it used to be. And even women’s rights, the way women have taken hold, they’ve always been there, and they’ve always been present. And women have always been leading revolutions in Lebanon, for at least the last a hundred years. But when it comes down to it, this is the first revolution where people started paying attention, and filming it.
Dayna Ash:
And granted, social media really does help with that. But women have really just amplified. And they’ve started switching because we also in Arabic, we only have curse words that relate to the woman. So if you want to curse a man out, you have to curse, his mother, his sister, and then you get to him. We’ve also started in the middle of the chants, to refuse the uses of just women, so we attack the actual person, rather than his mother, and his sister, and all of that.
Laura Flanders:
There’s also a role for the diaspora for Lebanese people who are living all around the world of which there are many, many, what’s that role been?
Dayna Ash:
Well I think each one of them has had their own capacity. Some have taken on creating social media accounts to just support with what they can, as far as disseminating information. Some have been sending funds and assistance to ensure that people, under the poverty line, are still being fed. I think the most beautiful thing about this revolution is just the amount of unification, because they had done so well, at just creating this very, very great divide, and it’s an elusive divide, because it wasn’t really physically there, it’s just we wouldn’t cross into each other’s areas. We didn’t feel welcome. We didn’t think that we were allowed to. And now it’s people from different areas all over Lebanon, traveling around Lebanon to feed each other.
Dayna Ash:
I don’t know if they’re aware of it, but the longer they starve people, the more they’re going to be unified against them. And it’s very obvious now, as that default has happened.
Laura Flanders:
You also mentioned when we talked before something about Jobs for Lebanon?
Dayna Ash:
Yeah, there’s a new thing that the diaspora launched actually, where they are trying within their own organizations, and their own companies, to try to give opportunities to people that are living in Lebanon, so they can get a job. It’s just about being able to apply online, and get that little light push that you might need, because we can’t access our money in the bank accounts. And I think it’s officially now around 50 to 55% unemployment.
Laura Flanders:
So people are able to actually sign up online for a remote position, or doing a remote job, for a company run by a Lebanese person, or someone else who wants to higher level person-
Dayna Ash:
Exactly.
Laura Flanders:
… around the world.
Dayna Ash:
Around the world.
Laura Flanders:
So it’s not charity, they actually have a job?
Dayna Ash:
They have a lot of work to do. And there’s one thing I have to say about the Lebanese people, it’s that they’re extremely resilient. When you survive so much occupation, and then you finish that into more civil war, and then you finish that, and you’re rebuilding your country, it doesn’t end. Our resilience is profound, but the matter of the fact is we have 4 million Lebanese people living in Lebanon, but we have 16 million living abroad. So it’s only right that all of these kind of bridges and links begin to be recreated.
Laura Flanders:
What of your experience in Lebanon do you think would be helpful, for us here? Who are for sure, trying to figure out how to be more resilient, how to come together across divisions, how to deal with corruption, economic meltdown, and global plan pandemic at the moment, we’re talking?
Dayna Ash:
I think the first thing that this country needs, is to come out of it’s the stupor that they’ve put you in, whether it be through capitalism or consumerism, step away from your screen for five minutes, and really try to look at the other person living across the street from you, especially in New York, let’s say. You have so much diversity, that you actually have direct access to other people’s strife and experience. I don’t think enough people talk about each other strife and experience here. I also don’t think they care enough, because they’re so content with being able to order on Amazon Prime, that they forget that there is a life outside that is more than just a tee shirt that arrives at your door.
Laura Flanders:
And somebody is putting that stuff in that box, and getting it to you.
Dayna Ash:
Getting it there. It’s just about being able to expand that. And for me it’s insane, because everybody keeps… I’ve heard this a lot, especially in the last week that I’ve been here. Everyone’s like, “How do we do this? How do we do this?” What you need to do, period. There is no more, “How do we?” You get on the streets, you protest, you call for organizing just a strike. What they did in Iceland, I believe it was 75% of all women, went on strike to change their system, and now it’s one of the best economies in the world. I think it’s ludicrous for us to think that, the power is not in the hands of the people. They want you to think that, and they’ve conditioned us into believing that we have no power. But when they say go vote, it just in its sense, in itself gives you the understanding that you actually have all the power, and even if you vote wrong, protest.
Laura Flanders:
Well, we’re often told voting is our only option. And then the other thing we’re told is that people in the streets just materialized magically. Dr King’s huge rallies just kind of appeared.
Dayna Ash:
Popped up.
Laura Flanders:
I don’t suppose what you’ve been seeing in the streets in Lebanon is entirely unorganized, or spontaneous. What does actually gone into, not just an expression or explosion of people’s frustration, but the maintenance of this resistance, in strenuous ways for so long.
Dayna Ash:
Yeah. The spark of the revolution was absolutely organic in the sense that, none of us knew that we were going down, and we just did. And it was because of an MP bodyguard, firing live ammo into the air to disperse protesters. All of us were at home on Facebook, or on Instagram, or whatever, and we had that video pop, and within seconds, the entire country was on the streets. And when I mean the entire country, I mean the entire country, within the first week, had hit the streets. And a woman actually, which is the symbol of the revolution at this point, who is also now being sued by that MP, and she’s being sent to military court. It’s not just… She’s not going to civil court.
Laura Flanders:
And the name of the woman?
Dayna Ash:
Malak, I believe. She’s just called Malak. She is The Malak. Which means angel. And that’s how we felt it, because she really did… she dropped kicked him in the stomach, and flew him back. And she was surrounded actually by a bunch of guys, and instead of all of them being… because nobody reacts that quickly. Malak reacted in an instant, and that’s been… the momentum that can be seen every single day in the revolution, is women reacting in a way that… Everyone always expected Middle Eastern woman not to.
Laura Flanders:
And maintaining it? Are you also taking responsibility for feeding people, schooling people, looking after people if so much is shut down?
Dayna Ash:
Well, I think civil society and NGOs, and independent actors and activists, have been doing that for years. We’ve been doing it actually, as Haven, we’ve been doing it for 11 years, and we’re a nonprofit, and most of us are volunteers, and there are places like Recycle Lebanon. There’s plenty of organizations that are functioning constantly, that have been functioning for years, that suddenly have now, shown themselves. They’ve always been there, it’s just the government has not really made use of them, like they should have. Because we don’t recycle in Lebanon, we don’t get rid of our trash. We had a trash crisis and we had protests, and still nothing happened. You get to a point where it’s like, “Okay, how do you react to this?” And if it wasn’t for civil society, I don’t think we would’ve been able to function as a country.
Laura Flanders:
I wish it sounded more remote and foreign.
Dayna Ash:
No, it’s quite similar to the States, and that’s what I mean, when I say that the American citizen needs to wake up and realize that capitalism, is the issue in their life. And I’m not saying, abolish capitalism, obviously that’s going to take whatever time that needs to be, but there needs to be an awareness that capitalism does not put people first. Capitalism puts the bank account first, and we need to work around that, so that everyone has money, and can live a life of dignity.
Laura Flanders:
Dayna Ash is our guests. There’s more information about her work and the Haven, and if I had the award here, I would give it to you, I’m very sorry that the Commission on the Status of Women was canceled because of the coronavirus. You will be getting many more awards, I’m sure that’s yours.
Dayna Ash:
Thanks.
Laura Flanders:
Thanks for coming to town.
Dayna Ash:
Thank you for having me.
Laura Flanders:
You’re watching The Laura Flanders Show. More information at our website.
Laura Flanders:
(Music)
