The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Town hall meeting held by Beirut Madinati, April, 2016. Author's photograph.
”Despair is not our fate”, “32,000 reasons to hope”, “40% for change” - hardly had an electoral defeat ever sparked as much hope as “Beirut Madinati”, Arabic for ‘Beirut is my city’, did. Despite its failure to gain any of the twenty four city council seats (given the majoritarian system), this less than a year old volunteer-led campaign of independent activists managed to win 40% of Beirut’s electorate in the recent municipal elections held on May 8, against a coalition of deeply entrenched, decades-old sectarian parties.
