98 Coming Out and Coming Together protests at the London embassy because her family in Benghazi had joined the revolution. When Sarah called her aunt, her aunt declared, “The whole family’s outside” – where people were being shot! And I said, “Go back inside!” and she was like “No!” You could hear shooting on the line, and she’s like, “It’s either Gaddafi or us. For us, Sarah, the fear is gone.” For this reason, Sarah decided to do the unthinkable and go to the London embassy to protest against Gaddafi. From the Washington, DC, region, Dr. Esam Omeish, who went on to co-found a new anti-regime lobby called the Libyan Emergency Task Force (see also Chapter 5), had a similar experience. He also felt empowered to speak out in the media because his parents’ escape from Tripoli “helped us to increase our activities without fear for any reprisals against them there.” Violent repression therefore upset the relational mechanisms that had previously forced those abroad to keep their anti-regime sentiments private. The second factor prompting activists to come out occurred after they observed vanguard revolutionaries taking brazen risks and sacrificing themselves for the cause of dignity (karamah) and freedom (hurriyah). This led respondents to embrace the potential costs of coming out for moral reasons. Even though some continued to receive threats, as when Mohammad of Sheffield received a threatening anonymous email and had his computer-based communications hacked, he said, [With] women being raped, children being killed, innocent people being killed, I didn’t care, you know. I mean, compared to what the Libyans are going through while I’m sitting in an office in the UK, trying to help, and compared to what they do in [Libya], it is nothing. Ahmed, a British Libyan doctor, also decided to reveal his identity during the second day of demonstrations because “there was a fire in me. People are dying! I’m talking to my friends who are protesting in central Tripoli and I’m wearing a mask? That’s ridiculous! It just didn’t seem right.” Even after agents inside of the London embassy were observed photographing the participants, Sarah recalled that “it was too late. We were out already.” Likewise, Ahmed H., a Libyan American who had been active anonymously before 2011, stated that despite the fact that his sibling was trapped in Tripoli, identifying publicly with the revolution was important for the collective effort. I wouldn’t cover my face at that point. I made it a point to do everything – [in] all of my online communications, all my appearances, my name was being spoken. To make sure that people understood that if people are going to be out there on the front lines, sacrificing or risking their lives, then the very least I could do from the US was to make my name known and to say I’m with you, no matter what. Adam of Virginia felt the same way, scoffing, “Everyone was just like, you know what? Screw it. If people in Libya are willing to die for it, I mean, what are you going to do? Take my picture? All right, here, I’ll take it for you – I’ll pose.” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press