Just over a month ago, Mosta’s mayor announced a reversal of plans to uproot 12 ficus trees from the town’s main square. Their survival was secured by a group of a protestors who physically and digitally arrested the nation’s attention through their express refusal to surrender the trees.
Viewers watched while demonstrators were carried away, pried from their seated obstinacy as they guarded the venerable trunks, defending them as though apostles of the nation’s diminishing public realm.
There was more before this.
In September 2019, a protest was organised by Moviment Graffitti, with 60 non-political activist groups fighting the onslaught of hyper-construction. Earlier that year, activists gathered to oppose the Central Link project and potential uprooting of up to 550 protected trees from the Mrieħel bypass to Saqqajja Hill.
In December 2020, residents of St Julian’s, Sliema and Gżira protested the towns’ rapid development and forsaken built heritage, while in March 2021, activists, farmers, and residents of Dingli stood for days in objection to the construction of a road cutting through agricultural land, endangering a group of 300-year-old carob trees. One month later, people gathered in Victoria, Gozo, to rally against overdevelopment on the island.
In January 2023, a ‘Justice Protest’ for Jean Paul Sofia – a 20-year-old man who was killed by building collapse during construction works – was called, galvanising activism against an industry deemed to have graduated from excessively harmful to repetitively fatal. Five months later, eight organisations announced a national protest titled, Xebbajtuna! Bidla fl-Ambjent u l-Ippjanar ISSA!, congregating the mounting contempt against the scale of development on the islands.
Mosta’s fight for trees, therefore, links to an ancestry of organised agitation (the local concern for trees stretches back to 2012, when objections to uprooting of trees as part of the City Gate Valletta project was made following similar exercises in Marsa, Cospicua, Luqa and Mellieħa).
A civilian battle against the besieging of Malta’s urban fabric is resolutely ongoing. To this point, someone recently asked me if I thought protests worked, or if they were actually counterproductive to securing real change.
They don’t always. In London in 2023, built environment professionals took to the streets as part of the Extinction Rebellion’s four-day climate action demonstration known as ‘The Big One’. Architects demanded urgent government action on carbon emissions. According to post-protest reports, they were “met with near-silence”. But even if demonstration doesn’t always result in direct resolution, it does hold power to catalyse individualistically.
We’ve been made malleable, a generation of compliance
When I watched the Mosta demonstration footage on Instagram, I spotted a familiar face among the vigilantes. Sumaya Ben Saad, a soon-to-be architecture graduate who I’d worked closely with in the past, was present that day – becoming part of the reason this famed file of ficus trees had been rescued. I wrote to her to ask if she’d be willing to talk about her decision to join the demonstration. We met online a few days later.
I felt protective of Sumaya, not wanting to invite reputational risk to her name at such an early stage in her career. I acknowledged, however, that she had already taken that leap, in showing up that day. My questions were around that decision.
“Even though I think my contributions were minimal, I believed in the power of the collective,” said Sumaya. “The way I reasoned with the risk of going is that I think the architecture profession is quite versatile. So, in the worst case, were I to be blacklisted, I could try and find something new to do. So, I tried not to be fearful.”
“Before this, I wasn’t someone who would go to protests, even if they were totally aligned to how I viewed things. I think I played a big part in what I’d call our ‘scaredy-cat-syndrome’. The reality is that people feel that if you speak out, there’s a big chance you’ll fall into trouble and damage your livelihood. And this damage is always attached to finance – you won’t get your warrant, or you won’t have a lucrative career path. It’s never just about how you feel about the situation. It’s never about if you morally feel right about what’s going on.
“In the end, I figured that what I needed to be fearful of was doing nothing. Because if you just don’t show up, then no message is sent. In our society, the messages we receive are overwhelmingly from politicians. But from our side, the people’s side, our only platform is online commenting. That’s how we communicate. So, the other powerful thing I realised was that, protesting – or at least showing that you are not satisfied with what’s happening around you – is our message.
“In the past, say three to two decades ago, protests were being held about what I consider to be small issues compared to what we are seeing now, with bigger crowds. Back then, people were sensitive to what was happening. Whereas now, we’ve been made malleable, becoming a generation of compliance, of being okay with anything. But protests like this can help enlighten people around what is actually a big problem. And it’s made me hopeful. Because I genuinely believe that, ultimately, everyone cares about their environment,” she concluded.
In Sumaya’s case, protest did lead to direct action – Mosta’s ficus trees will be spared from Malta’s pervasive ‘embellishment’ offensive. But beyond that, her participation proves how protest can act as a personal audit on civic responsibility.
The role of protest has never felt more charged than it does today. In the past month, protests around the world have taken on the dual function of activating resistance and providing sanctuary for grief where nothing else really can. And while demonstration is often conflated with virtue signalling, the latter only happens when activism fails to infiltrate or bend everyday ritual.
Protest ‘works’, if nothing else, because it sends a message – if only to oneself.