August 31st outside the GPO in Dublin and over 100 people gather to protest at the Turkish invasion of northern Syria. The invasion seems to be intended to stop the two sections of Rojava linking up - a linkup would cut off ISIS from the Turkish border.
The demonstration was called by Rojava Calling and Saoirse Jin groups. Saoirse is the Irish word for Freedom and Jin the Kurdish word for women. There were speakers from the Kurdish community, political organisations including the WSM and Sinn Fein and a trade union speaker. You can hear most of these speeches in the video.
The native Irish ruling class have long been prone to parasitical activity, enriching themselves by acting as agents of absentee landlords or today as law firms for multinationals keen to avoid and evade paying taxes. As landlords agents that involved breaking down the doors to evict those who were literally dying of starvation. The modern form is less hands on but the repercussions are similar, the 13 billion they don’t want to collect from Apple are the same billions whose absence has people dying on hospital trolleys.
The shutdown of Dublin bus services begins prematurely at 21.00 tonight thanks to management's refusal to trust the workers to wind down the service ahead of tomorrows two day strike, the first of three scheduled. As our name suggests Solidarity Times stands in solidarity with the bus workers, just as we were in solidarity with the LUAS strikes.
In both strikes a media looking for angles to attack the workers on choose the relative size of the pay claims they were making. 21% sounds big but the period covered, 2008 to 2019, is actually 11 years. But workers in Dublin need big pay increases and contrary to what RTE might tell you this isn’t a bad thing for most of us, quite the opposite.
When the Corrib refinery was being built & resisted campaigners warned that environmental legislation was set up to have no meaningful impact on multinationals. Two days ago we saw a very clear demonstration of this in practise when Shell was fined EUR1,000 of an estimated EUR240 million in Corrib sales so far this year. Such a fine has no deterrent impact at all, it might as well have been one cent.
This image is fresh from Rojava, posted by @bobcrowbrigade to their twitter stream with the caption "International Freedom Battalion in solidarity with our sisters in Ireland fighting to #repealthe8th"
About 200 people took part in a protest last night at the misleading pregnancy advise centre on Berkely road exposed yet again by a Times investigation, see their video below.
This protest was organised at very short notice by Real-Productive Health. They had organised a protest about a year back as well but this operation has been misleading women in crisis for about a decade with similar protests happening on many occasions over those years.
This morning (8th September) the Bob Crow Brigade fighting ISIS in Rojava have sent solidarity greetings to the Dublin bus workers who have begun the first of 6 strike days fighting for improved wages. The image shows two volunteers posing in front of a wall which has been painted with the Starry Plough, the flag of the armed workers militia set up to protect strikers in 1913 from police attack. 'Socialism will Win' has also been paintined along with Beir Bua, which can be translated as 'good luck' or 'be victorious'.
September 17th sees the next major national march against the 'we can't believe they are not dead already' water charges. We respect that many anarchists will be marching with their local groups but for those who are not we thought it would be good to have an anarchist bloc and march together, everyone can then meet up at the end.
On Tuesday the 27th of September there was a solidarity picket held outside the Children's Court in Dublin. The picket stood outside from 10 am till 5pm today the day of the verdict of the Jobstown kids trial. People from Tyrone, Arklow, Wicklow and Cavan travelled to show solidarity outside the Children's court and there were solidarity pickets in other counties.
Protesters crowded around on the street, in a natural symbolic reaction of solidarity against the trial of a 17 year old, who has long worked in communities volunteering. Who the state has created spurious charges against him, of “false imprisonment”. When the minister Joan Burton was in Tallaght - a community blocked her in for a short time out of her privileged life, so miniscule in comparison to the communities who suffer a life sentence of poverty as she and her cronies eased tax for vultures and slashed welfare.
Last week we were blown away by the amazing level of solidarity that was offered to those of us who are working tremendously hard to introduce free, safe, legal abortion in Ireland when a photo emerged on twitter of two members of the International Freedom Battalion in Rojava next to a sign that said “Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban” (Until the women are free none are free) and “Repeal the 8th”.
The image went viral and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive with many people tying in that no one struggle exists in isolation from the other, reinforcing the importance of international solidarity in trying to create a new world.
The 5th annual march for Choice takes place September 24 and once more we are bringing together an anarchist bloc for the march, which is organised by the Abortion Rights Campaign.
The Irish government's attempt to introduce domestic water charges in Ireland is not going well. In fact, for them it's been a disaster because it's sparked off a huge upsurge in working class self organisation and direct action. Saturday saw thousands of anti-water charges campaigners flooding the streets of Dublin o to again voice their opposition to Irish Water & water charges and as a show of strength for the movement.
It has been fully understood since the very beginning of this campaign that Irish Water was simply a vehicle to be used for the privatisation of water services and infrastructure in Ireland. The right wing, neo-liberal political establishment wished to gift the most vital of all resources to capitalist interests who would squeeze as much profit out of commodified water as possible, while cutting off the water supply to anyone who couldn't pay their extortionate charges. However, due to a huge effort on the part of working class organisers, the water charges appear on course to be abolished. The significance of this campaign in laying down a milestone for working class self organisation will be felt for years.
We march today to demand change. So much is wrong in our country and our world. People are denied their Bodily Autonomy or endure Direct Provision racism. Some struggle to find decent work or keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, our media is dominated by one super rich villain. Beyond this island, the news is worse. Oil companies are driving us into climate disaster.
As they have driven ISIS back in northern Syria / Rojava the Kurdish YPG and their allies in the SDF have won increasing visibility in western media. While such reports often mention the key role in this fight played by women in the YPJ, there is otherwise little examination of the revolution happening behind the front lines in Rojava. That revolution is why they stood and fought ISIS rather than fleeing. This can be true of a lot of alternative media coverage. In part this is due to the limited amount of information on what this revolution involves. but it’s also in part because photographs of women with guns are judged to be more striking than women workers in a co-operative bakery or a community assembly.
We’ve tried to address this imbalance somewhat, both in our coverage and through bringing a number of Kurdish and other speakers over to talk at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair. They spoke about what is happening behind the front lines. What is it that is being constructed that so many have judged is worth going to the front lines to defend against ISIS? Our speakers this year included Erjan Ayboga author of ‘Revolution in Rojava’ and US academic Janet Biehl who has visited the region twice since the revolution to investigate what is happening on the ground.
This is more than a little odd. It appears that someone prominently associated with Youth Defence was on the March for Choice in September complete with a (fake) Repeal jumper and an obnoxiously phrased placard. Another activist on the way to the march saw the same women with one of the Youth Defence leaders.
Dave Gorman spotted her and tweeted about it from the march, that tweet was subsequently shared by 100s of people, all no doubt curious as to what was up. Our video reporter at the march had noticed the woman pass and while initially thinking the placard made her look like a Youth Defence infiltrator but also thought it was possible it was someone who had English as a second language. She was recorded in the video though, the segment is attached proceeded by Dave's tweet alerting people which we only saw later.
On Saturday 24th of September the Anti-Internment Group held a protest outside RTE (Irish television and radio station) studios in Donnybrook south Dublin. The protest was held because of RTE’s censorship against the case of the Craigavon 2. The Craigavon 2 have been in jail since March 2009, Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton (who was only 17 years of age at the time) were accused of the shooting dead of a Police officer.
Their trial was a farce, not only was it a non jury trial, all evidence used in the case used by the prosecution was either circumstantial or witness evidence from a witness whose statements were totally contradictory but also his own father came forward and said he is “walter mitty” (a walter mitty is well known slang in Ireland for a liar).
The Bob Crow Brigade fighting ISIS and defending the Rojava revolution took time out recently to post images supporting Repeal the 8th and the Dublin bus strikers. The photos of masked people men & women with guns posing in the sand beside placards with slogan about our struggles in Ireland caused some confusion, some even assumed they had to be photoshopped. The above image is a variation on the one they tweeted.
Like what you're reading?
Find out when we publish more via the
WSM Facebook & WSM Twitter