How a 19-year-old girl became a virtual player in the Syrian Revolution (and so can you)

When Alaa Basatneh started communicating with Syrian protesters from her home in the Chicago suburbs, it didn’t seem like a big deal. The Syrian-born teenager was simply interested in staying connected with current events in her native country.

But as the Syrian Revolution evolved, so too did Alaa’s participation. Using her mouse and keyboard, Alaa became a central player and key organizer in the early stages of the rebellion against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime half a world away.

Alaa, the subject of a new documentary film #ChicagoGirl, shared her insights with Fusion on how to manage a revolution in the digital age.

In the case of Syria, the moment came when 15 kids were detained for writing anti-government graffiti on the walls of a school in the small town of Daraa. That sparked protests, followed by a stupid government reaction. Before too long, the protests spread organically across the entire country. That’s the cue to get involved.

Because the Syrian regime closely monitors social media, Alaa helped protesters by acting as a proxy to upload videos.

“The best way to do it,” she explains, “is for the activists to go protest, upload the video to YouTube without anything in the headline, send it as private to me, and I download the video.  They delete the video, and I blur the faces, write the description in English, upload it myself and start to send it out.”

Alaa’s work shows that encouraging diverse groups to protest together helps amplify the call to action. “You need to show that it is not a tiny minority of people against something. That way others feel invited in, too.”

Once activists galvanized to demonstrate in public, Alaa helped them organize a safe exit strategy.

“When activists would say ‘we’ve decided to protest in this square,’ I would go in on a Skype meeting and help figure out escape routes, and make sure that people from neighborhood A go this way, and people from neighborhood B go this way, so they’re not all running to one place and get blocked. They need to know exactly where to run from, and where to run to.”