Workers Solidarity Movement

Anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has confirmed its intention to join the protests against Tuesday’s budget at Dáil Éireann.

Speaking today, Gregor Kerr, WSM P.R.O. said that members of the organisation would be joining the 1% Network protest meeting at Wolfe Tone statue St Stephen’s Green at 5:30p.m. and marching with them to participate in the protest at the Dáil at 6p.m.

“Ordinary people are being sacrificed on the altar of international capitalism.  We absolutely must step up the protests against what’s being done to us.” – Gregor Kerr, 1% Network spokesperson

The 1% Network has called on “workers, the unemployed and all who care about any form of democracy or equality” to protest outside the Dáil on Budget night, Tuesday 7^th December.

Despite freezing temperatures, an estimated one hundred thousand people were on the streets of Dublin today to take part in the ICTU demonstration against the draconian four year plan, which is raising taxes on low paid workers, slashing wages, social services and cutting social welfare.  The WSM took part in the demonstration with the 1% Network, highlighting the wealthy 1% of the population who own 34% of the wealth, and pointing out that only a general strike can force them to back down from making us pay the full costs of the crisis.

We want to make the 1% rich pay, not the compromise of 'fairer' cuts.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions have called a national demonstration on 27th November in Dublin which will see tens of thousands take to the streets. But many are very unhappy with the ICTU leadership and a march called on the basis of 'fairer' cuts and a return to the disastrous policy of Social Partnership. The 1% Network will be taking part in the demonstration - not to support the demands of the ICTU leadership, but to outline what we see as the alternative. This is not in the expectation that the ICTU leadership can be convinced but because we want to make the argument to the thousands of workers who will take part that it is up to all of us to organise what is needed, a general strike, despite that leadership.

The 1% Network has called on all workers to attend the march organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions on Saturday morning next to “show their opposition to the anti-people policies of the Irish government, the European Central Bank and the IMF”.

Countless walking tours make their way around Dublin daily; generally educating the masses of tourists on the lives lived on these streets before us. It was a different kind of walking tour, comprising around 200 people, that hit the streets around Stephen’s Green on October 9th last.

This afternoons Radio Solidarity show on Near FM will talk about the 1% Network tour of the Golden Circle heartland of Dublin 2 & 4.  If you click on the this 1% Map - you will have a guide to the walking tour .  This will prove helpful when you listen to our report on this walking tour in Radio Solidarity Program 8 - on Resistance going out this afternoon (2 Nov) at 15.30 on NEAR FM. An audio will be available for download later this week.

Saturday 30th October saw the WSM take part in the latest 1% Network event, an after dark Halloween Treasure Hunt around Dublin's exclusive Shewsbury and Ailesbury roads taking in the mansions of multi millionare bankers, developers and financers as well as the HQ of Allied Irish Bank and the 32 million in tax avoidance of the luxury Four Seasons hotel. The tour was led off by a vampire capitalist accompanied by a contingent of Zombie bankers and developers and ghost estates with the vampire showing how much wealth was present at each stop and explaining the contacts between the 1%, the media and the government that enabled them to make hundreds of millions during the tiger.  The tour was accompanied by uniformed Gardai and a car of special branch political police.  The 1% network is a coalition of socialist groups including the WSM, eirigi, ISN and Semora Spraoi formed to highlight the fact that the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth.

“Brian Lenihan might claim that there is no pot of gold to be had from the wealthy.  We intend to show him otherwise” - Gregor Kerr, 1% Network spokesperson

The 1% Network has announced details of the route of its Halloween Treasure Hunt, due to take place on Saturday evening, 30^th October.  Among the venues which the event will visit are the homes of well-known developer Bernard McNamara and former AIB chairman Dermot Gleeson.

Announcing their support for Saturday’s 1% Network ‘Halloween Treasure Hunt’, anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has said that the government’s proposed €15 billion of cuts would not be necessary if the wealthy were “made to pay their share.”