Workers Solidarity Movement

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.

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.

A little over ten hours ago (24th August) Turkish tanks crossed the Syrian border to supposedly attack ISIS. For the last couple of years Turkish troops and ISIS militants have been exchanging hand waves across the border as month by month hundreds of ISIS recruits have been allowed to cross it.

What changed? Over the last weeks the SDF fought street to street though the town of Manbij, just south of Jarablus. Eventually they forced ISIS out and started to advance towards Jarablus, these advances in effect closing the ISIS supply route across the border. Turkey really didn’t want the SDF which includes the Kurdish YPG and YPJ to capture Jarablus, hence this last minute invasion.

An important demonstration against homophobia takes place tonight in Dublin in the aftermath of a frightening mob attack on a Polish gay man in the Phoenix park at the end of last month. The protest will take place on the steps of the Parkgate street court complex because of its location close to the scene of the attack and because of the Garda disinterest in investigating it.

As the organisers of tonights protest explain “On 30th July 2016 a gay man was viciously attacked in Phoenix Park by a gang of over 10 young men. They made homophobic threats and insults, chased him, hit him with an iron bar and made him fear for his life by beating him and attempting to run him over in a car. He ran, screaming for help until he found someone and the gang finally fled. He was taken to hospital and treated for his injuries.

Belfast saw a fantastic Rally for Choice march July 2nd 2016  - by far the biggest pro- choice demonstration in the north in many years, perhaps ever.

Despite being organised on a shoe string is was also bigger than the annual anti - choice march. Even though the organizers of that have access to so much money they had billboard vans driving around the city advertising their event.

A demonstration organised by United Against Racism took place on Tuesday 10^th on Nutgrove Way, Rathfarnham. Despite the wet and windy weather, a couple hundred people assembled to show solidarity with the Ahmadzai family - originally from Afghanistan - and to send a message to their assailants. 4 men, at least some of them local, carried out a vicious and pre-meditated racist attack on brothers Naqib (18) and Fazal (20), and their 13-year-old nephew Abdul, on Thursday 5^th at around 8pm as they walked home.

We spent the day of the 100th anniversary of the 1916 rising on the streets of Dublin recording the various peoples commemorative events. This was the actual anniversary on 24th April rather than the religious nationalist and state favoured date of the Easter weekend a month back.

In a lot of ways this seperation was a very good thing as the state commemorations with its parades of soldiers and sealed off areas for dignitaries behind which hated politicians laid wreaths had little positive to be said about it.

Our solidarity to Cadburys workers who today begin an indefinite strike at the Coolock plant against the outsourcing of jobs.  The company is trying to destroy 17 properly paid and pensionable jobs to replace them with minimum wage ones.

Over the last week the massive abandoned Grangegorman complex has been reoccupied by squatters including many of those who were eviced last year.  As our video shows after the High Court injunction last year the owners who took posession did nothing to bring this huge area back into use for housing.  The sole interest seems to have been in selling it, recently it was sold and when the new owners didn't bother with the 24 hour security on site it was reoccupied.

Some 30 people had been living in the various buildings that make up the Grangegorman complex prior to the High Court injunction.  The injunction ment that those 30 all had to try and find alternative accommodation as a time when the housing crisis in Dublin has deepened and rents have soared above levels affordable even to someone earning two times the minimum wage.

The footage you are watching is the 20th Feb  protest against the water charges in Dublin speeded up by a factor of four so it doesn't take a long time to play.  The match took place the Saturday before the general election is to take place in the south and it's a good time to ask with the election drawing close is this really going to bring the changes we are looking for