Guests:
Poliana Geha - Beirut Based Consultant and Activist
Natalie Samarjian - Beiruti Diasporan and Human Rights Activist
On August 4, 2020 a neglected hoard of highly explosive sodium nitrate exploded in the port of Beirut. In an instant over 100 people died with thousands more injured with tens of thousands of people displaced and a central city destroyed. This tragedy is all the more infuriating and devastating because it was a preventable one, and it typifies the incompetence, corruption and lack of credibility that characterizes the Lebanese state. The explosion also adds new horror to the already crippling economic crisis gripping the country and the intense public health crisis resulting from COVID-19.
As the country reels and calls for new government grow deafening, it is important to note the role Lebanon plays in the region as a key home of refugees (a third of the overall population) and a society where many different sects, religions and ethnicities exist peacefully. Rebuilding Lebanon will take many resources not least of which is the people of Lebanon themselves many of whom are asking themselves whether it makes sense to participate in the country's reconstruction or to start anew somewhere else.
To outline the crisis and take us through some visions for the present and future we invited Beiruti resident and activist Poliana Geha as well as Los Angeles based Beiruti diasporan Natalie Samarjian. They step us through how Lebanon arrived at its present predicament before the explosion, the chaos and devastation that it wrought, and what a path forward may look like for a new Lebanon. Please listen to find out how you can be part of Lebanon's renewal, and how the struggles facing this important nation reflect many of the battles being waged in America and elsewhere.
