Downtown needs YOU!
I won't copy-paste my post here because it's quite long, so please read my post.
In brief, there is a call going around in Beirut to urge people to return to the Downtown Area. The place is a ghost-town now, which is understandable, but will have very serious repercussions on Beirut as a whole if this continues.
posted by Ramzi @ 10:12 PM
5 Comments:
No. Let us hold more protests. They're fun.
...veiled attempt at cynicism?
Hi,
I agree with you completely. I stopped going to the downtown for two weeks after the Assassination of Mr Hariri. But after that, i passed by there twice or three time a week as i have always time. I think it is as safe as anywhere else in Beirut or regions, the explosion of New Jdayde is a perfect example about that. We must continue to go there, foreign people will be encouraged to go there and to go back to lebanon and to the heart of Beirut when they see and hear that lebanese are not afraid of going there. So let 's all go there. Let's at least fix a date and invite each of us all our friends to go there on this special date. I will be glad to receive news about it.
I agree that downtown should be revived and that life must go on, but I don't think this should be done at the expense of the protests. If the protests stops, the opposition loses a powerful way to put pressure on the current puppets and lose international exposure. We cannot afford to have an empty downtown and yet we cannot afford to "move on" as if nothing happened. I hope we can find a way out of this mess, because we're pretty stuck right now. Unless someone can spin the whole thing, like the Americans once did in a time of hardship, to make it look like spending our liras is an expression of patriotism and support for our country.
Nobody is calling for the protests to stop, that would be terrible I agree. But people should not feel 'unpatriotic' if they have a meal or a cup of coffee in a place so close to the protests and in a place that has witnessed so much drama.
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