Workers Solidarity Movement

The wave of repression unleashed by the Turkish state against the left and the Kurdish freedom movement that has seen tens of thousands fired from their jobs and thousands jailed, including many HDP MPs,has also hit the anarchist movement there. We heard last night that Hüseyin Civan has been sentenced to 15 months for editing the anarchist paper Meydan Gazetesi.

A high court judge yesterday granted an injunction that directs the Home Sweet Home occupiers of Apollo House to vacate the building by noon on January 11th. This means that the occupiers will remain in the building until after Christmas which is some good news but it still means that the State is quite willing to forcibly eject people from safe accommodation back out onto freezing streets or into unsafe, sub standard accommodation.

This video was shot on the morning of the Apollo House injunction hearing at the High Court, 21st December.  As well as footage from outside the courts on our way there we had earlier visited the sites of other occupied buildings evicted in the last 20 months. We discovered all of them were still vacant and in most cases no visible work at all had been done on them.

About an hour ago the Apollo house occupation received a finally crafted piece of legalistic bullshit designed to divide homelessness activists from the professional services on 'Health & Safety' grounds. Health & safety has become the go to excuse for pushing people onto the streets, when the Halston street (ex) prison was occupied over the summer we say the same 'concern' this time over the fact that the pigeon shit found in that building was a health and concern safety. As we observed then there is plenty of pigeon street on the cold, wet streets of Dublin but now its winter and those streets are very much colder.

RTE Drivetime engaged in some shameful clickbait trolling on Twitter last night to try and get a few more listeners. While they have congratulated posh schools for engaging in token sleep outs they decided to directly attack the occupation of Apollo house and its bringing into use as an emergency shelter for homeless people.

And boy did it fall on its face. Normally far far more people will like a Tweet than reply to it. In this case though 201 people have posted angry replies and only 19 liked it. A far stronger message though had already been sent out when the occupiers Home Sweet Home Eire page attracted over 27,000 followers in 6 days and over 1500 people have actually volunteered to help keep the shelter open. Likewise so many donations of materials were received that within a couple of days out had to be announced that there was no room for more.

Next week sees an exciting speaking tour around Ireland when author Ercan Ayboga who spoke at the Dublin anarchist bookfair will be launching  “Revolution in Rojava.”  Dublin WSM has been running a reading group* on this book over the last month and we highly recommend it as an account of the nuts & bolts of the Rojava revolution essential to anyone who wants to transform the world.

Cork: O’Rahilly Building (ORB 132), UCC, 12th December, 6pm

Dublin: Connolly Book (43 East Essex Street, Dublin 2), 13th December, 6pm
Cavan: Bridge Street Centre, Bridge Street, 14th December, 6,30pm
Dungannon: Éalú Centre, Shamble Lane, 15th December @ 6:30pm
Belfast: Just Books (22 Berry Street, Belfast, BT1 1FJ), 19th December @ 6:30pm

This coming January in Derry, activists will be holding its first evert Radical Bookfair. In a statement on their web page organisers said: On Saturday 28th January 2017 the first ever Derry Radical Bookfair will take place in Pilots Row Community Centre, Rossville Street, Derry, BT48 6LP.

The event takes place on one of the busiest days of the political calendar in the city which is during the Bloody Sunday week of events. Each year the same venue itself hosts the annual Bloody Sunday events such as talks, films and discussions around contemporary social justice issues.

It has emerged that Mike Israel, the US YPG volunteer who fell fighting ISIS in Rojava on the 24th was  a member of the IWW. Initial reports of his killing alongside a German - Anton Leschek - volunteer indicated they may have been the victims of a Turkish airstrike but said they had been killed north of Raqqa where its unlikely Turkish jets would be attacking. The Manbij Military Council has released a statement confirming they were killed in a Turkish attack near Manbij where Turkish jets have carried out dozens of attacks on the SDF.

About 50 people gathered in the Teacher’s Club on Monday evening for a public meeting organised by Rojava Calling.

Speaking at the meeting were Faysal Sariyildiz, People’s Democratic Party (HDP) MP in Turkey, and Calvin James, a Dublin born DJ and activist who spent 6 months as a volunteer medic in northern Syria in 2016. Faysal joined the meeting by Skype from Brussels as the Turkish state recently cancelled his passport.

Saturday 19 November saw a mass fascist attack on an anarchist bookstore in France in the aftermath of a fundamentalist catholics rally of the SPXX organisation which in Ireland is central to the anti-choice movement.