Date: July 11th 2007

Belly Button Window - an American experience - http://www.bellybuttonwindow.com

Rarely do I get a chance to revisit places I've been before. Both by design, as there are so many countries left to see, and by chance as my work and pleasures change geography often. But this summer I've been lucky enough to revisit both Nairobi and Beirut.

June saw me rediscover the beauty of East Africa in Nairobi, even picking up a house number during my visit. And now July finds me in Beirut, the capitol of Lebanon, crisscrossing the country for work and decent tan detailed on http://www.bellybuttonwindow.com

Both travels allow me the rare luxury to compare cities at two points in time and I am happily surprised to say that I am impressed by their progress. Nairobi has continued its clean-up after the Moi years, with gains in education and employment visible in every interaction. Beirut, while damaged by last year's conflict with Israel, has rebounded with multiple construction projects city-wide.

And yet, in between these uplifting travels, I fought against the repression of basic rights in our own country, in my own backyard. A developer in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC, is trying to restrict First Amendment rights on public land it leased for $1 a year.

Believing my rights are worth more than that, especially when the development received over $150 million in public tax dollar investment, I helped organize a 4th of July protest. You can read more about this here: http://www.freeourstreets.org

Attended by 100+ outraged citizens, we've started a groundswell of pressure for developers to recognize our rights in every public-private real estate partnership in Maryland.

Hopefully, next year I can revisit Silver Spring and have the same joy as I do now in Beirut and did last month in Nairobi: witnessing positive progress for the future.

Wayan

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