Government

Beirut’s Protest City Is a Rebuke to the Privatization of Public Space

Anti-government protesters set up a cooperative tent city in downtown Beirut, where a generation ago, redevelopment pushed out ordinary people.
The word "Revolution" is projected on a building during a protest in downtown Beirut, October 22, 2019.Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

BEIRUT—A protester carefully places a plastic water bottle in the correct recycling bin under a tent run by volunteers, before scurrying back to a crowd calling for the fall of the Lebanese government.

Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut is packed with demonstrators, a microcosm of what appears to be Lebanon’s largest independent popular uprising in recent memory.