Conversion of Capital 197 The problem is the work that we have to do is not the work of organizations – it’s really the work of nations. Because no matter what we do, it’s never enough. We can’t give out enough food, we can’t set up enough schools. The Syrian American Medical Society can’t help every single person that’s injured. L., who had worked within Syria to deliver aid and fight with the Free Syrian Army for a time, noted that the formalization of aid transfers from the diaspora was problematic for both practical and moral reasons. He lamented, When I gave out cash to families in need in Syria, to widows and orphans, [Syrians in the United States] told me it’s illegal for me to give out cash to civilians. That I need receipts. I’m like, are you kidding me? You have to break rules. That’s how you get results. You can never even have a revolution if you follow the rules! The whole revolution is illegal! It makes no sense. As the poor response of states and international institutions to the Syrian crisis increased the need for diaspora intervention, activists shifted into full-time professionalized advocacy, thereby establishing a sustainable transnational advocacy field. While formalization had its limitations, this was the only option for movements facing an expanding humanitarian emergency and a losing war at home. That said, even as diaspora activists in the United States and Britain performed a number of critical roles in the cause through capital conversion, they nevertheless perceived their efforts as insufficient to meet needs on the ground. 6.2.4 Yemeni Challenges to Converting Material and Fungible Aid to the Revolution Yemenis faced a different situation. In order to keep the pro-revolution protest movement legitimate in a diaspora plagued by conflict transmission (see Chapter 4), organizers deliberately did not establish formal organizations out of concern that participants would accuse them of co-opting, or speaking over, revolutionaries in Yemen. Mahmoud of Sheffield said that Yemenis had not “moved” to that extent in their history and that mobilizing the community became a big job. However, they “tried to make it less formal in order to keep everybody involved and not to create political fractures or fights for representation.” They were also “cautious about finances, because we were independent. We asked people to pay for themselves and we collected donations from people to pay [for others]” to go to London for demonstrations. Financial sponsorship of the pro-revolution movement came to be associated with co-optation, and for this reason, organizers relied on individuals to fund their participation and kept their initiatives informal. The activist groups they formed are listed in Table 6.3. Keeping their claims vague and their movements informal was tricky for organizers, however, for several reasons. Ahlam, a Yemeni activist youth with https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press