Workers Solidarity Movement

On Tuesday 10th of May eight homeless people (two women, one which was heavily pregnant) and six men with the support of An Spreach and housing activists occupied the Bru Aimsir homeless hostel on Dublin’s Thomas street. The hostel was opened in 2014 as a direct result of homeless man Jonathan Corrie dying, found frozen to death in a doorway just metres away from the Dail.The decision to occupy the hostel was made by the eight homeless people as they had been refused a bed in the hostel for that night, another 42 people were also refused a bed for the night. The beds were took away without warning. The beds were took away as part of the hostels “winding down” period towards its closure on the 29th of May. The building the hostel is in is owned by the government's Department of Communication.

The 12th May saw the first demonstration protesting the effective Internment of Gaeilgeoir, graduate and political activist Dónal Ó Coisdealbha, outside the Dail.

Dónal will be held on remand in prison from 2015 until 2018 for trial,without chance of bail,or release,despite the fact that he is willing to accept the strictest of bail conditions,including electronic tagging and house arrest. There has been widespread condemnation and criticism of this serious infringement upon an Irish Citizens legal and human rights.

Some of those who have pledged their support to Dónal include TD's Clare Daly, Mick Wallace and Maureen O Sullivan.

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.

A protest took place yesterday (7th May) in Belfast as part of a set of UK-wide and broader European demonstrations against immigration detention centres. The group of about two dozen protestors set up a mock detention centre outside of Belfast's Europa bus centre at 1pm today.

The photo shows stickering by anti-racists/anti-fascists on Nutgrove Way, Rathfarnham, where the vicious racist attack on 3 migrants by 5 men happened on the evening of Thursday, 5th May. All 3 – originally from Afghanistan - went to hospital for their injuries. The 18 and 20-year-old brothers were beaten unconscious (some of the assailants using a blunt metal weapon), and their 13-year-old nephew was punched in the face.

'“They rolled down the window and started shouting the F-word many times, swearing a lot and saying, ‘Why are you here? Go back to your country,’” [the boy's father] said.'

On May 9th there was a protest against the giveaway of public land to private interests, outside Dublin City Hall.  As part of the "Housing Land Initiative" Dublin City Council is threating to hand land across Dublin - in O'Devaney Garden, St Michael's Estate and Oscar Traynor Road - over to private developers.

Activists are calling on Dublin City Councillors to:
1. Halt the Housing Land Initiative
2. In St Michael's estate and O'Devaney Gardens, ensure regeneration committee are re-established and consulted prior to all decisions,
3. In O'Devaney Gardens, build homes on-site for remaining residents before making remaining residents leave their current homes
4. Use all three sites to build cross-subsidised public housing that's accessible to all income groups evenly, with those who earn more paying higher rent.

Dublin saw a day of protests in solidarity with the Kurdish Freedom struggle today. The video shows the protest at the GPO, site of the 1916 rebellion against British colonialism 100 years ago. During that rebellion British forces destroyed much of the center of Dublin and murdered civilians much as the Turkish state has been doing in Bakur (SE Turkey) over the last months.

Close to 200 people gathered outside of the Public Prosecution Service and the Courts in Belfast yesterday (April 7) to protest against the decision to give a three month suspended sentence for two years to a young woman who had an abortion in her home.

The 21-year-old woman tried to raise funds to travel to England so she could have the procedure done legally but when she was unable to come up with the costly funds she was left with no other option but to order abortion pills online like so many other women have been forced to do.

A new campaign has today (April 7th) been launched which aims to provide practical help to people who need to access abortion and pro-choice reproductive healthcare.

The initiative, Need Abortion Ireland, comes in the wake of a woman being handed a three month suspended sentence for two years in the North for having an abortion in her home, something which would have been legal had she been able to afford an abortion in England.

If someone were to tell you that in the modern day UK abortion is illegal you’d probably laugh in their face at such a statement. You’d probably write it off as ridiculous and not worth your time debating considering a simple google search will tell you that abortion has been legal in the UK since 1967. It might then be a surprise for you to hear that just yesterday a woman was handed a three month suspended sentence for two years for having an abortion.

A 21-year-old Co. Down woman who was facing life imprisonment for having an abortion through the use of pills obtained on the internet has been given a suspended sentence.  It is understood that after failing to raise the funds to have a legal abortion in England she ordered the drugs, Mifepristone and Misoprostal in order to have the abortion