An interview about the wave of occupations and evictions that took place in the first half of 2015 in Dublin.

People gathered outside the Turkish embassy in Dublin last night to take part in a solidarity protest of remembrance for the 100 plus people killed in the bombing of a peace rally in Ankara on Saturday. 

An interview with a couple of the people involved in The Barricade Inn, the squatted social centre on Parnell street, including a video tour of the interior.

Dublin city centre came to a halt Saturday 26th September as thousands of people marched for choice and against Ireland's anti-women law that would jail people who access abortion here for up to 14 years.

The key demand is to Repeal the 8th Amendment which was passed at the height of clerical control back in 1983. So long ago that nobody who voted on it would now be in a position to even become pregnant. More that 2/3rd of the population want abortion to be decriminalised, only 25% want the current criminalisation to remain yet Enda Kenny has announced he has no intention of introducing a referendum to Repeal the 8th.

About 10 days ago three van loads of riot cops arrived at the door to No 2 Gardiner Place at around 9am,  There they formed a Roman style tortoise shell shield formation and proceeded to start to batter the door down.  Once in they stormed through the building, arresting the residents and dragged them down to the High Court for an eviction / injunction hearing at which they were forced to agree not to try and re-enter the house.  No media outlet deemed any of this worthy of coverage.

Solidarity Times had been in the building the previous week, shooting some video in anticipation of a campaign in opposition to the eviction.  We’re assembled a video report on the space from that footage as yet another example of the vast amount of empty housing that is around even inner city Dublin. Homelessness is not caused by a lack of usable buildings but by deliberately leaving such buildings empty and boarded up in order to create the scarcity that is seeing rent hikes and a new property bubble.

The photo shows the Jobstown 23 'Drop the Charges' banner on its way down the Quays to the courts on Parkgate street. The Jobstown 27 charged in connection with the protest last November which saw Labour Party leader struck in her car because of a sit-in just in front of her. 

Revenge came initially in the form of over the top dawn raids on the houses of water charge activists and now after a long delay many are charged with crimes as serious as false imprisonment  - the maximum sentence for this is 14 years - despite the fact that several Garda were also around her car at all times. The number facing charges means this may be one of the largest political trials in Ireland for some decades.

One of the WSM memebrs was using his van to help transport refugee solidarity donations to Jigsaw, one of the Dublin sorting points of this grassroots initiative. He took a moment to shoot this quick video explainer showing the volume of materials that has poured in.

Thousands of people gathered in central Dublin Saturday 12 Sept to take part in an emergency refugees are welcome march in response to the ongoing crisis of hundreds of thousands of people being trapped on the European borders and over 2,500 drowned this summer alone

One more tens of thousands took to the streets of Dublin as the governements attempt to force water charges on the population looks more and more like it has failed.  This high quality footage of the march in progress will give you a sense of the size and composition of the marches.

The Rojava revolution is taking place in three catons of northern Syria that are part of the area known as Kurdistan stretching through Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  In 2012 a revolution occured in the Syrian cantoons, an area of 18,300 square km.  The population of Rojava was estimated in 2014 as 4.6 million, obviously the ongoing war in the region makes precise estimates difficult in particual as refugees move into and out of the region as the fighting ebbs and flows.