Workers Solidarity Movement

About fifty people attended a Campaign Against the Household and Water Charges meeting in the Donore Avenue Community Centre in the Dublin 8 area on the 8th of February. Two speakers who have been involved in building the national campaign addressed the attendees, providing important information about the campaign and the need for community resistance.

Important topics were touched upon, starting with the inherent moral and economic unfairness of this charge and the disparate government agenda that underpins it. We know where this money is going. It is not going to build community centres or make our roads better, it is going into the pockets of the bondholders and bankers who caused this recession.

Perhaps the most prevalent theme in the meeting was the need for communities to come together and resist this charge together before it is brought in, and gets hiked up to €1,000 in a couple years time.

There was a questions and answers session and general opening up of discussion to the floor. There was so much to say that the hall was booked for an extra hour.

A number of people, pensioners especially, were worried about the governments’ threats of mass fines and court hearings. People were reassured that with strength in numbers, a legal fund (which is being built with the €5 that people give to officially join the campaign) in case the government singles people out for court hearings, and mass community support, these threats would remain idle.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of the meeting was a general sense of community empowerment and solidarity, which was felt with the vivacity of conversation and the frequent clapping and cheers after people contributed to discussion.

Just about all the people who weren’t officially part of the campaign signed up before leaving.

Many people who had never been involved before will now talk to their neighbours, families and colleagues about the importance of becominging active in the campaign.

As of this evening, the D8 area moved a small step closer to achieving mass refusal to pay this unfair charge. And we were empowered by the knowledge that this is happening in communities like ours all across the country. Together we are strong. We can’t pay, we won’t pay, build mass non-registration by St. Patrick’s Day!