Northwestern students learned the power of social media Thursday during a screening of a documentary by the International Studies Program about an American teenager taking part in the Syrian revolution from her bedroom in Chicago.

Directed by Joe Piscatella, “#chicagoGirl: The Social Network Takes on a Dictator,” documents the experience of a 19-year-old college freshman, Ala’a Basatneh, organizing protests and exposing the violence in Syria to the world from her Chicago home during the first year of the revolution. Basatneh uses social media platforms Facebook and Twitter as tools to overthrow a dictator.

“My friends in Syria are being detained, and I can’t isolate myself from the reality over there,” Basatneh said in the documentary.

As part of the event series “Perspectives on the Refugee Crisis” held by the International Studies Program in association with Middle East and North American Studies Program, the screening took place at the University Library for an audience of 10 people, mainly undergraduate students.

In the film, Basatneh explained that her main mission was to use Facebook to join small groups of protesters together in one place to demonstrate.

She also purchased small film equipment and shipped them to the citizen-journalists in Syria to record the protests and shelling.

Footage filmed by citizen-journalists was dispersed throughout the documentary, showing severely wounded activists and bombardment. One of the Syrian filmmakers, Bassel Al Shahade, who was a good friend of Basatneh, was killed while filming in Homs.

“That day (when Shahade died) I wanted to leave everything online and just sit there and cry,” Basatneh said.

Sureshi Jayawardene, a PhD student in African American Studies and a Global Cafe mentor under the International Studies Program, was one of the organizers of the event. She said this film makes a serious political crisis more understandable to Northwestern students by telling the story of a 19-year-old girl in Chicago.

“We want (the learning experience) to be led by undergraduate students, so they can relate to the issue,” Jayawardene said.
Ameer Al-Khudari, a Weinberg senior from Homs, Syria, was invited to lead a discussion after the screening. While agreeing that the film seems more accessible from a Syrian expatriate’s perspective, he said he hopes more students can see films documenting experiences of actual protesters in Syria.

“Basatneh is just one of many online activists outside Syria,” Khudari said. “(Syria is) where the real action is happening.”

Near the end of the film, Basatneh and her friends began to feel helpless after the United Nations failed to be of substantial help. While her Syrian friends put down their cameras and took up AK-47s to join the Free Syrian Army, Basatneh traveled to Syria twice to bring in medical supplies.

“The real change is happening on the ground (in Syria),” Weinberg freshman Carolina Laguna said. “So what are other things we can do besides sharing things on Facebook?”

For Weinberg senior Alexa Klein-Mayer, one of the main avenues for students to help is by addressing the refugee crisis.

“There are lots of things going on in Chicago to raise money, and the donations will all go to save the Syrian refugee relief effort,” Klein-Mayer said.

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