In December 2011, a group of Syrian activists released 2,000 ping-pong balls onto a steeply sloping street in Damascus. On each one, they had written a single word: freedom.
The activists belonged to Freedom Syria Days – a collective of revolutionary groups dismayed by Syria’s slide into war and desperate to hold on to the nonviolent, subversive spirit that had marked the first months of the uprising. Insisting that Assad’s regime could be crippled by civil disobedience, they instigated a general strike, closing shops and disrupting transport networks. They covered credit cards with glue and stuck them into ATMs. They poured red dye into the fountains of Damascus.
