118 Coming Out and Coming Together The uprising also breathed new life into the Syrian American Council (SAC), but the gradual emergence of the revolution meant that SAC’s reform-oriented stance did not automatically convert into a pro-revolutionary one. Hussam, who helped establish the Los Angeles chapter of SAC and would later became its national chairman, recalled that the council’s first statement on the uprisings was laughably humble in hindsight. He said, It wasn’t asking for changing of the regime. It was still addressing Bashar al-Assad as the legitimate president – Dear President Assad, basically. We stated support for the demands of the protesters, which at that time were very, very simple. It was very peaceful. It was about political reforms, freedoms, release of political detainees. And the argument behind it was that’s what they’re asking for in Syria. And we can only support what they’re asking for on the street. There’s no need to push the envelope higher than they’re doing. As long as the regime is willing to compromise and come to somewhere in the middle, that’s my insistence. We made it a condition [that] anyone joining SAC or speaking for SAC [had] to abide and be committed to a peaceful revolution, a nonviolent one demanding freedom and democracy and a slow process of change. This initially put SAC at odds with longtime activists calling for regime change. When Marah Bukai was invited to SAC’s first national meeting in May, she recalled asking them, “‘What is going to be your major statement?’ They said, ‘We want to see some changes in Syria.’ I told them, ‘I’m sorry, you should go and knock on the door of someone else. For me, I want this regime to go.’ So their ceiling was different than my ceiling.” Just as many Libyans had believed that Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam would be the harbinger of reason in the early days of the uprising, many Syrians also held out hope that Bashar al-Assad would do the same. Belal, a Syrian American from Orange County, California, had represented the Syrian expatriate community in dialogues with Syrian regime officials in the past. He explained, When I met [Assad] face to face and we were talking, you know, he really showed humility and he showed passion. He was very passionate about making change and I believed him. So that’s why I became part of the expatriate [group] that wanted to build a bridge between here and Syria. However, after sending a letter to the regime and receiving a favorable response, Belal was left waiting in vain as violence on the ground escalated into the summer of 2011 and produced over one thousand casualties. Once the regime escalated its retaliatory response to protests by laying siege to entire cities and towns, reformist groups mirrored calls for the fall of the regime that were spreading across Syria. Hussam of SAC recalled, “After the regime showed that they had absolutely no interest in reforming or changing their ways, that’s when I said dialogue cannot work.” In an evolution of SAC’s position, he explained why the organization transitioned from supporting a peaceful revolution to armed resistance: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press