The youth revolution for a Lebanon where they can stay

The 17 October Revolution in Lebanon may be a spontaneous movement wanting to remain “fluid” without clear leadership, but youth are clearly at the helm of this mass mobilisation, dubbed the “student revolution” as protests entered their fourth week. Open discussions and debates take place in downtown Beirut on a daily basis discussing a wide range of socioeconomic and political issues in bottom-up citizen-led deliberations. Discussions are participatory, democratic and equal and protests are decentralised and non-violent. Each neighbourhood or group holds its own internal discussions for mobilisations and makes its own decisions.It is not only the scale of the revolution that is unprecedented, but also its aspirations for change. The 17 October revolution is not just a political intifada but a cultural revolution toward a more inclusive Lebanon, one where youth will no longer passively accept discrimination based on age, sect, gender, socioeconomic background or any other grounds. Equal opportunities are a basic tenet of an inclusive economy and society, and it is precisely this usurpation of equal opportunities that youth were leaving their classrooms to contest on the streets. The country came to a standstill for the first two weeks of the revolution with leading educational institutions, faculty and students supporting the mobilisation. The University Professors’ Coalition, which brings together professors from private and public universities, actively participated in the mass mobilisation, emphasizing the need to protect the independence of higher educational institutions and particularly the Lebanese University, the only public university. A joint statement by the presidents of the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Saint Joseph...