March 2019

Ode to ARC - a video love story

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To mark International Women's Day 2019 we are releasing this video that celebrates the grassroots womens organising responsible for victory in the 2018 abortion referendum.  We'd heard the text at the ARC Christmas party and immediately felt it would make a fantastic video, hopefully you will agree.  The authors introduction is below, we've also recorded a background interview with her about the campaign which gets further into the grassroots organising themes expressed in the video, see link at end.

The author Mary writes "On International Womens Day two years ago we gathered on O'Connell  Bridge and in towns all around Ireland as part of Strike 4 Repeal, demanding that the government call a referendum on the 8th amendment. On International Womens Day last year, we marched under the banner of Votes for Repeal. We had a proposed referendum date, the structure of a campaign, energy, commitment and determination. But the result was far from certain. On International Womens Day this year, Ireland is free of the 8th amendment. Barriers to access remain and the work of ensuring free, safe, legal and local abortion care for everyone who wants and needs it continues. But we are in a place we did not think we would be a few short years ago. We have moved out from under the shadow of the 8th. We got here through collective action, hard compromises, exhaustion, friendship, compassion, determination and grit.

School students walk out against Climate Change

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Thousands of school pupils packed into Dublin City centre 15th March to protest the ongoing inaction at looming Climate disaster. While many of may not see the worst consequences of climate change in our lifetimes this generation will certainly witness the start of the really bad times unless action is taken in the next decade to slow and then reverse the release of Climatre Change gases.

Protesting racism in Rooskey

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Rooskey - when I heard the name, it triggered some flicker of recollection. A memory was stirred. As it turned out, it is not far from where my mother's family come from. I had a cousin who grew up in a nearby Longford village, I had actually cycled through this place. So it vaguely came back to me, and I remembered the bridge spanning the Shannon, as that great river flows onto Lough Ree and down towards Athlone. My mother's people grew up around that Lough. I’ve spent summers listening to the wind whistling through the telephone wires. Today I was on my way to an anti-racist protest.

Review: ‘Worshipping Power: an anarchist view of early state formation’ written by Peter Gelderloos.

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This book unapologetically does away with many tired myths about the origin of states, their alleged utility and the so-called social contract. For far too long these myths have led many to accept authoritarian institutions as necessary for the coexistence of human beings in large scale societies, allowing a tiny minority to enslave exploit and murder in plain sight, under the protection of a legitimizing discourse. But that shit is going away.