Workers Solidarity Movement

The government are in full panic mode as the media scare stories they pushed so hard about 'dissidents', 'sinister fringes' and 'violent' sit down protesters have failed to divide the movement. Neither has the increased level of Garda violence frightened people off the streets.

Garda assaulting community protesters and the media not reporting? Politicians spinning greater and greater lies about 'sinister fringes' and dissidents? What's happening now to Water Charge resistors happened to the people of Rossport a few years back and we can learn from their determined resistance.

Scenes of Garda violence being used against water charge resistors have come as a shock to many people. Ten years ago if this had happened most people elsewhere might only have heard rumours and assumed that something must have been done to deserve the response. Today however the prevalence of camera phones and the ease of sharing photos and video on Facebook has meant one video after another showing disproportionate violence from the Garda has ‘gone viral’.
 

Running scared from the huge numbers mobilising to resist the water charge the establishment are now pulling out all the stops. Over the weekend we saw an image of a single brick being thrown at a Garda car used to try and divide the movement through saturation coverage of the brick and the demand that resistors condemn 'violence'

Then on Sunday as Enda Kenny drove out of the Mansion house three Garda grabbed Fiona who was protesting there and threw her head first into a metal bollard at the side of the road. In the video of the incident you can hear a sickening thud as she hits the bollard but you can also see the considerable force put into throwing her. But don't expect a media outcry about the violence of 3 large men smashing a women's head* off a metal pole, instead expect to hear once more about that brick that bounced off the back of a car.

There were significant disturbances in Santry & Coolock last night following a Garda assault on water charge campaigners protesting a visit by Enda Kenny and Denis O'Brien.

These images are from the video at the link  which shows why the campaigners became so outraged. As Enda Kenny drove through the crowd (flashing a dismissive thumbs up sign at the protesters) Garda were assaulting them and throwing them to the ground.

Later multiple arrests were made as Enda left the event and then Garda attacked solidarity protesters with pepper spray who had gone to Coolock Garda station.

Nov 1st saw demonstrations against the water charge all over Ireland. Around 1000 people from Dublin 7 alone marched down Constitution hill to join the huge anti Water Charges rally at the GPO

According to RTE these are the changes in the Budget. After years of making us pay for the crisis it appears that a few carefully selected crumbs are being thrown under the table to quiet us down. Predictions are that most people won't see a significant change in take-home pay. Most of the positives on social welfare and services represent the government returning a fraction of what was taken and the 'Make the Youth Emigrate' dole rates remain in place.

On October 8th about 200 people marched though Dublin to show solidarity with Kobane under attack by ISIS in an emergency demonstration organised at short notice.

What was intended as a rally turned into a march on the Dail (Irish parliament) when more than the expected 30-40 people turned up. The attendance was made up of members of the Kurdish community in Ireland, Turkish leftists and anarchists, left-republicans and other socialists.

Decades of lack of investment in social housing and the growing housing crisis in Dublin means that Dublin city council now appear to be considering building temporary slum housing. That's not of course what they are calling it but Assistant chief executive and head of housing Dick Brady has revealed a plan to house families in prefabs on derelict sites.

It is a confusing time to be on the revolutionary left as everything that was once certain turns to smoke.

Technology has overturned and remade what constitutes effective communication and the construction of networks.

Quite how to organise is no longer clear, while old reference points of 1917, 1936 or even 1968 no longer provide definitive models.

Minister Frances Fitzgerald claimed to be shocked at reports that some women in direct provision centres felt compelled into sex work by the poverty they are kept in. How can that be, it's Minister Frances Fitzgerald who actually operates this direct provision system that creates such circumstances.

As the Minister she does not allow asylum seekers to work, leaving them to exist on €19.10 per week, often for periods measured in years. Who can imagine living month after month with such a minuscule amount of spending money? And while she now wants to suggest she has concern for such women the reality is that she is the one who signs deportation orders, orders which will very often send the same women to very much more difficult circumstances.