Workers Solidarity Movement

WSM recently held our first Facilitation and 'Conversations about Anarchism' training day in Dublin. The photo shows the problems attendees had already encountered in meetings they had participated in. How many of them have you come across?

The purpose of the training was to give people the basics of facilitation that can avoid or at least minimise these problems.
At the end of the training all the 11 people who had taken part were very positive about it. One said “It was good to meet new people, I learned a lot about facilitation and would now be more confident now, I also learned about anarchist process” while another said “It was very comprehensive with detailed techniques about how to facilitate.” Everyone said they would be interested in future trainings.

The cartoon on the left is from a few months ago but expresses how Kurds saw the role of the Turkish state towards ISIS and the conflict in Syria. Considerable evidence of support for ISIS from the Turkish state has been published in the international media over the last months. An ISIS commander told the Washington Post on August 12, 2014, "We used to have some fighters -- even high-level members of the Islamic State -- getting treated in Turkish hospitals."

This Sunday the Observer revealed details of a US Special forces raid on an ISIS compound. “One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader’s compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now “undeniable”.” Oil smuggling was what that ISIS leader was co-ordinating with the Turkish officials and ISIS were getting an “estimated $1m-$4m per day in oil revenue”

A disturbing feature of the prison rebellion in Cloverhill yesterday was that, if the prison is to be believed, a large group of prisoners took a fellow prisoner as a hostage seemingly because he was a migrant.

Up to 60 prisoners were initially involved in a protest in the exercise yard. 45 agreed to return to their cells while according to media reports "armed themselves with homemade weapons, including razor wire and goalposts" and took Walli Ullah, an asylum seeker who is being held in Cloverhill as a hostage and subjected him to a violent beating.

This video shows some of the violent eviction of a house on Phibsboro Avenue in Dublin during which the inhabitants were pepper sprayed and arrested on a ridiculous burglary charge. They had been living in the house two months and were of course later released without charge.

Dublin protested last night against ISIS and the support it has received to date from the Turkish state. The protest was called by Lookleft in the aftermath of the Suruc bombing. 32 humanitarian volunteers on the way to help in the rebuilding of Kobane were killed in the bombing, at least 2 anarchists were amongst those killed.

The bomb went off on Monday at a community centre in Suruç a small mostly Kurdish town just across the border in the Turkish state. The Amara Culture Centre which was where 300 people on a Federation of Socialist Youth Associations stayed on their way to Kobane. 32 of them were killed by the bomb including at least two anarchists and over 100 injured, some critically.

A couple of hundred people came to the pro choice solidarity rally in Dublin last night. It was called to protest against the prosecution of a women in Belfast for supplying her daughter with the abortion pill.

Banners reading Drop The Charges and Free Safe Legal Abortion had been prepared the previous evening for the protest which had been called by the Workers Solidarity Movement and (Re)al-Productive Health. There were speakers from both these organisations but also from the Abortion Rights Campaign and ROSA whose banners were also brought to the protest.

The Workers Solidarity Movement strongly condemns the arrests at Wednesday evenings pro-choice demo in Dublin city centre. In particular we condemn the casual and unjustifiable use of pepper spray on pro choice protesters, one of whom was being held immobile on the ground as he was sprayed.

Our demonstration was called to protest the arrest in Belfast of a woman who has been charged with assisting her daughter in obtaining an abortion. A sizeable crowd gathered to offer solidarity to her and to the many other women living in Ireland who suffer under draconian abortion laws.

Those arrested are known to us a dedicated pro-choice campaigners. It is our democratic right and duty to take an active part in the society that we live in. Such garda behaviour has no place in a democratic society. An injustice to one, is an injustice to all.

Bertie's 'testimony' to the banking enquiry could hardly have provided a better example of the way politicians in this country understand they are protected from any consequences of their wrongdoing. Apparently we are to believe that he hardly knew any developers. Even the Mail is outraged, but what will be done about it?

It turns out that when the Irish public are asked about the treatment of undocumented migrants here in Ireland in the context of being asked about undocumented Irish migrants in the USA the racist hostility that is too often expressed almost evaporates.

This was the finding of a RedC poll commissioned by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland. The MRCI estimates there are between 20,000 and 26,000 undocumented people in Ireland, including thousands of children.

The Bolt Hostel is a building occupied by community & housing activists in order to provide emergency accommodation for homeless families. The video shows progress from when the occupation first happened to the kitting out of individual rooms for use.