Workers Solidarity Movement

Thousands of people gathered in central Dublin Saturday to take part in an emergency refugees are welcome march in response to the ongoing crisis of hundreds of thousands of people being trapped on the European borders and over 2,500 drowned this summer alone

The print media on Sunday failed to give any prominence to the huge water charges demonstration that had filled O'Connell street the day before. This view shot from 3 locations in the rally gives an idea of the vast numbers, yet as shown the front pages of the main Sunday paper failed to mention it.

One more tens of thousands took to the streets of Dublin as the governements attempt to force water charges on the population looks more and more like it has failed.  This high quality footage of the march in progress will give you a sense of the size and composition of the marches.

In a further confirmation of the empty nature of electoral democracy its been revealed that the Dublin City Council manager wrote to the company building the controversial Poolbeg incinerator to assure them they could ignore the two city council votes against the project. This after a special meeting when 50 out of 52 councillors voted against the proposal!

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.

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.

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.