October 2013

Dub: Syria - Revolution, Civil war & the Arab Spring meeting

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Farah Azadi who lived in Damascus, Syria from December 2005 until war broke out in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 will lead off a discussion on Syria, next Wednesday evening 9 October in Seomra Spraoi at 20.30. 

After 2013 March for Choice UCD students vote for pro-choice position and massively reject anti-choice arguments

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About a 1000 people took part in the annual March for Choice in Dublin on Saturday 28 September. Because there was an all island final on huge numbers of people saw the march through town and quite a few stopped to clap the march passing. The march was organised by the Abortion Rights Campaign

Report on Dublin Council of Trade Unions Pre-Budget Demonstration

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A crowd of over 500 people took part in Saturday’s  pre-budget march called by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions. The DCTU’s core message was to demand progressive taxation and public investment as an alternative to further cuts in public spending. 

As always, the Spectacle of Defiance and Hope contributed greatly to the atmosphere of the rally with impressive visual and musical displays. A hearse and coffin led the protest, followed by nine giant posters bearing the much unloved faces of nine government ministers with the blood red inscription “Austerity Kills”. The Spectacle’s second message reverberated in song through the streets: “Arise, arise, arise!”

 

Deaths in Custody in Australia - Thirty years and still no justice

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An Irish anarchist living in Sydney reports of recent march against deaths in Custody and its parallels with Ireland. "Many of our readers may be aware of the tragic death of Inner city Dubliner Terence Wheelock in 2005 from injuries received in Garda Custody while in the North there is a long history of state violence and terror in and outside of custody; as there are across the UK.

"Australia is no exception to this given its colonial racist roots in the active dispossession and genocide of its indigenous people and the continuing plight of asylum seekers. Recently a national day of action took place across Australia marking the 30th anniversary of John Pat’s death in custody. Up to 100 people took part in a rally and march in Sydney including anarchists and the James Connolly Society, set up by Irish emigrants drawing links between the continuing colonial legacy in Ireland and Australasia.

Beyond the "solidarity of the same” - Solidarity, class and empowerment

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Solidarity is a word that fills the songs, slogans and even names of movements in the anarchist, socialist and left tradition. Yet the meaning of the term is often assumed to be common knowledge that needs no further explanation or enquiry. In line with the theme of this issue of the Irish Anarchist Review this article aims to look a little deeper into the history and meaning of this term and how it should inform our activity today and the problems we face. Particularly in situations when equal empowerment between all the participants in the solidarity relation cannot be assumed as a starting point. Clearly solidarity, class and equality are all in some way intertwined, but the question is how, exactly?

 

Review- Anarchy in a Cold War

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They say you can't judge a book by it's cover. The cover of the book, however, which has a picture of someone's buttocks with a circled A on one butt cheek and the squatter's symbol pretty much told me what was in store.

Irish Travellers - Apartheid, Irish Style.

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Solidarity is unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards.[1] It refers to the ties in a society that bind people together as one.

A good barometer of any society is how it treats people who are the most socially disadvantaged. In other words we are talking about people on the edge or on the bottom of this heap. In Ireland we have a pyramid structure which has 1% of individuals at the top owning 34% of the wealth. At the broad base of this triangle we have people who are treated appallingly, who are discriminated against, stigmatized and ultimately written-off before they reach the age of adulthood. People who are never given a chance; many Travellers find themselves here.

Interview with an organiser from the Quebec 2012 mass student strike & movement.

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Having recently completed a seven stop all Ireland speaking tour, Vanessa Gauthier Vela answers some questions on the nature of the 2012 Quebec student uprising.  This interview is a longer version of the one that appeared in the print version of Irish Anarchist Review 8.  Audio from Vanessa's talks in Ireland will also be available soon.

 

 

1. Can you briefly summarise the struggle of 2012 for our readers?

Horizons of our imaginations: Anarchism and Education

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Tom Murray looks at anarchist principles of education and argues that autonomous, co-operative learning is central to our finding new ways of challenging authority and dis- covering freer, more equal ways of being in the world.

Inclusive, intersectional, anti-racist feminist class war - Many shades, second sex

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I was recently in the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street for an appointment with a gynaecologist. The doctor requested I get some blood work done, and so I was placed in a chair outside an intake room. After waiting a few minutes, three people emerged from the room, two in medical uniforms and another in religious clothing.

After the one in religious clothing had left the hall area, the two in medical uniforms looked at each other in shock. One of them then says to the other,
“Well I never. . .”
The other cuts across her, “Me neither. Where was she from?”
“Iran. Wow.”

Shadows of a revolution - Nick Lloyd's Spanish civil war walking tour reviewed

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Ask an anarchist for an example of a time and place where their ideas were put to the test and they will most likely reply with “Barcelona, 1936”. In July of that year, the workers of Barcelona, mainly organised around the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT; "National Confederation of Labour") rose in opposition to the fascist generals' coup that was gripping the south of the Spanish state.

Bread and Robots: Automation, urban farming and the abolition of wage labour.

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“Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.”
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Why I became an anarchist - Russia / Georgia / Greece / Ireland

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As is the case with most of my comrades, I did not suddenly wake up to find out that I am an anarchist. It was rather a gradual process that started with a determination to fight racism, challenge patriarchy and doubt the existence of some omnipresent old man with white beard.
I was born in 1987 to a Russian mother and a Georgian father in Siberia during the last years of the USSR and spent most of my childhood travelling back and forth between Russia and Georgia, changing different cities and schools and meeting people who were very eager to prove to me how much of a better nation Georgia is in comparison to Russia and vice versa. What affected my ideology the most was my family’s decision to move to Greece where I got to meet many interesting people and during the last years of school together with friends to start reading books on atheism, feminism and anarchy.

The anti-Roma racism of the child seizures - No further Action Required

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In this guest piece Damien Walshe, long term anti-racist activist, takes the opportunity to reflect on what happend in the last week when State authorities acted to take away blonde children from their Roma parents.

“Damned if they did something, damned if they did nothing”

A standard response (and the one trotted out by the Minister for Justice) is that it was best for the HSE/Gardai to err on the side of caution: “better be safe than sorry” has been the mantra. Okay, let’s have a look at that statement: What the danger was established in order to abduct the two Roma children from their families? Under the Child Care act children can be taken into care if a child has or is being assaulted, ill-treated, neglected or sexually abused, or whose health, development or welfare has been or is likely to be impaired or neglected. No one has remotely suggested this was the case for either child.

Creating an Anarchist Theory of Privilege

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Privilege and the theory around it is a significant topic of debate at the moment among those interested in radical social change. Touching on many issues dear to the hearts of anarchists, it is hard to avoid.(i) Yet, the two are not fitting together as well as they should and there is a sense of unease about this. (ii) Much of this is because privilege theory has emerged from US academic circles rather than anarchist ones and, ironically, has been co-opted to protect middle- class privileges. (iii) This is a situation in need of repair if we are to maintain our links with feminist, anti- racist and other struggles against oppression. If we are to create a mass movement capable of social change then it has to be able to engage with everyone in the first place.

 

Guest writer, Dónal O’Driscoll, contributes to the ongoing discussion on intersectionality and privilege theory.

Interview with Anti-Deportation Ireland activists

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Leticia Ortega (WSM) conducts a joint interview with a woman seeking asylum and Luke Budha of Anti-Deportation Ireland (ADI) and the Anti Racism Network (ARN).

 

Solidarity, Engagement & the Revolutionary Organisation

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Over the last couple of years the WSM has been going through a process of re-examining the way we relate to people interested in what we have to say. Alongside this we have recently begun to try and get a better understanding of what it is we do. Both these processes have some major implications in reaching an understanding of what the usefulness of a revolutionary organisation is in the modern era of broad and loose social networks.

 

Squat's the Story? Political squat facing eviction in Grangegorman

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A group of political squatters in Dublin are facing eviction from a row of empty, unused, rotting houses in Lower Grangegorman. We got a chance to speak to them and hear their side of the story. They are calling for people to come and help them resist eviction from Wednesday onwards.

-- 300,000 empty houses in Ireland, 5,000 people homeless --

An update from one of the squatters in Grangegorman after Day One of Eviction Resistance

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Today (Weds) was very quiet; there was no eviction attempt. We were prepared for the worst, but no cops called around, nobody claiming to be the owner, nothing.Just to recap, we are preparing ourselves to resist eviction because previously, on Friday, two people claiming to be agents acting on behalf of a company, which they claimed own two of the houses, came to illegally board them up. When we weren't letting them do so, they called the cops. The cops decided not to do anything because they did not have the paperwork or legal authorisation to evict us[1]. However, the “owners” and the cops did say that they'd be back on Wednesday (today) with “papers”.