Reply #105: The Face of Libya's Revolution

[tabatha]

It’s not a freedom fighter atop a tank but a young bohemian woman in Benghazi reviving a carnival banned by Gaddafi and singing songs of protest. Ann Marlowe reports on an extraordinary utopian moment in the free city.

The most interesting news here in Free Libya isn’t war but peace—and cultural vitality. Signs everywhere say, “We began it peacefully and we will end it peacefully,” and the utopian social transformation is much more interesting than the stalemated war.

...

But just a few weeks later, resilient twentysomething Libyans, almost all of them working outside their professional fields, have created an embryonic civil society and culture. The shabbab cool, or cool youth, who gave the Revolution of February 17 much of its visual flavor—the witty signs like “NATO Air: Just Do It”; the homemade T-shirts and caps—have turned their energies to writing, photography, documentary filmmaking, and rock ‘n’ roll. Their inspirations and style come from global youth culture—everyone is on Facebook and Twitter—but their seriousness of purpose and maturity reflect the trauma their city recently endured.

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On April 17, Shadda was one of hundreds of women in Benghazi who participated in an abbreviated observance of the traditional “Flower Carnival,” which Gaddafi banned in 1986. Even as Gaddafi’s troops continued to send cluster bombs into Misrata, women paraded through Benghazi to Freedom Square holding flowers.


The shabbab cool include an architect who sings in rock bands, an architecture student who used to rap, and a civil-engineering student who works on a new weekly magazine.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-04-18/libya-revolution-the-young-bohemian-face-of-the-uprising-in-benghazi/#