#YouStink

#YouStink, your government, your municipality, your disregard for your citizens, and your corruption. The #YouStink campaign began after the end of the Lebanese government's termination of the contract with their contracted private garbage disposal company and the closure of the Al Naameh dump site on July 17th, 2015. The government had no plan after the contract as to how they planned on disposing all of the trash, piles of garbage started to form and the people saw the piles of trash all around and everywhere smelt like trash. "Lebanese have long suffered through water shortages, regular electricity blackouts, a leaking sewage system and poor health and education services (Slim)," the people finally began to rise up when they felt that the government was no longer treating their people like humans by making them to live among trash. 

They also felt that their was corruption in the distribution of shares of the Independent Municipality Funds (IMF) was not being allocated correctly, and that privatization impoverished the people and pushed towards the situation that they were in where many public services were being disregarded. "Between 1995 and 2015, Lebanon spent more than two billion USD on waste management (Tadamun)" the private companies, Sukleen and Sukomi, who were in charge of garbage disposal for those years had found a goldmine for themselves taking advantage of the frailty of the government and creating a monopoly on the garbage disposal, making disposal more expensive in Lebanon than in most countries. With all of this money that the companies received they did little to recycle the waste making the landfills to fill up quickly. The filling up of the Al Naameh landfill led to the mountains of trash to move onto the streets and for the stench to spread all over. 

#YouStink created a great slogan to spread through international media coverage and to resonate with everyone who had to deal with the trash situation. The protests began by focusing on "environmentally friendly solutions to waste management; restoring the municipalities’ role in waste management by allocating public funds to them rather than to private companies; and holding those responsible for the crisis accountable... [but later] The scope of the protesters’ demands widened with each demonstration as they shouted out slogans condemning the corrupt state and how the confessional leaders benefited from the system (Tadamun)." These aspects create an ideal social campaign because of its ability to spread, yet the police brutality and defamation of the campaign lead to it ultimately dissolving without much results.  This campaign was able to unify people like no other previous protest had done which is both a good thing and a bad thing good because they had found a non-sectarian and non-partisan way of uniting the public yet because of the overall inclusivity that this campaign involves it ends up calling for different groups to bring different agendas onto the situation each group wanting to bring different types of changes. The campaign leaders did try to stop any political affiliations among the social movement to avoid conflicts among protesters ideas, but their stance ultimately was let out creating some distance between groups of protesters although there was still some type of unity among all.  

Today the waste crisis in Lebanon continues. Despite the ending of the You Stink protests, there was still a few things that were successful in the protests. They were able to stop the bidding process for privatization of waste management and they were able to bring in the debate of decentralizing the municipalities and how the distribution of funds should be equal. Another thing that the You Stink movement brought was the launching of the Beirut, My City campaign to run in the municipal elections in 2016 they focused on many of the ideas brought upon by the You Stink movement such as affordable housing, green spaces, access to public space, stronger environmental regulations etc. This campaign was able to get 40% of votes but they were not able to get a position in the Municipality. 

This political campaign although not entirely successful was able to show the people of Lebanon that there could be some type of unity among their people and that although they may be a country full of varying groups they can come together to create change. This was something that had rarely happened in the history of Lebanon and it is something that can now be kept in history to remind the people that when there is something wrong in their society they can come together to try to change it. 

Bibliography

“The Garbage Crisis in Lebanon: From Protest to Movement to Municipal Elections.” Tadamun, 21 May 2017, www.tadamun.co/2016/05/19/garbage-crisis-lebanon-protest-movement-municipal-elections/?lang=en#.WtTUDtPwbOR.

Slim, Randa. “Can #YouStink Campaign Shake up Lebanon?” CNN, Cable News Network, 31 Aug. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/08/31/opinions/slim-lebanon-trash-campaign/index.html.