In May five houses on Summerhill Parade in Dublin were evicted on almost no notice with some 120 people being thrown on the street.  All were owned by the same landlord who in order to make super profits had packed people in, 6-8  to a room, charging them 350-450 each  per month for space on a bunkbed.  Last night, August 7th, as part of a direct action month around housing people marched from the GPO to Summerhill and occupied No 35.[see video]

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian scholar who rose to prominence after his statements concerning a bill passed in Canada (C-16) to prevent trans people from being targeted by hate propaganda and from being denied services, employment or accommodation on the basis of their gender expression and identity. Peterson’s stance consisted in a slippery slope argument whereby this kind of law would supposedly lead to people being fined or imprisoned for not using a trans person’s preferred pronouns. By framing the law as an attack on free speech, Peterson may have mislead many people into thinking that this fantasy of his was actually what the content of the bill was about. Indeed the Canadian Bar Association made a lengthy public reply to his concerns (though without naming Peterson), clearly stating that the bill had been grossly misunderstood.

As it turns out, Jordan Peterson believes that hierarchies of class, gender and race are ordained by nature. As a direct outcome of this, he denies the existence of white privilege or patriarchy and is known to believe, along with many fascist organisations, that ideologies which contradict this perspective are part of a marxist conspiracy (‘’cultural marxism’’) to undermine western values and bring about totalitarianism. With no sense or irony whatsoever, Peterson suggested that kindergarten educators who supposedly target children with “postmodern marxist ideologies” should be tried for treason.

60,000 people marched as part of Pride this year in Dublin according to the organisers. This would make it  the largest to date, this year was also significant as it was marking 25 years since the 1993 decriminalisation of sex between men. 

25 years after the government finally removed the 10 year jail sentence for sex between men the Irish army marched near the front of parade, with many in the army band wearing rainbow angel wings.  There was one lone counter protester marching along the route 100m ahead of Pride with a cornflakes box on the end of a umbrella.   He had stuck a religious icon and the slogan ‘Sodomy is Sexual Abuse’ on the side of the box! While that was pretty laughable we do not forget that on the eve of the pride there were homophobic attacks in Dublin and Laois so we have a lot to fight for even if Pride today can  feel more like a corporate sponsored carnival than a protest. 

Sunday 10th June saw Processions2018 take place in Belfast and three other UK cities to commemorate some women winning the vote 100 years ago.

The Belfast event saw quite a large pro-choice bloc under the Alliance for Choice banner which comprised more than half of the entire event. Calls were made for reproductive justice and choice to be enacted in the north.