The families who were being housed in an emergency accommodation facility on 54-55 Mountjoy street and were to be evicted today have been fighting back. Yesterday afternoon they occupied the DCC offices, demanding that officals talk to them collectively. And this morning they occupied the buidling they are being evicted from, hanging banners from the upper floor as a solidarity protest took place below.
Archives: Blog entry
A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
Over the last week the massive abandoned Grangegorman complex has been reoccupied by squatters including many of those who were eviced last year. As our video shows after the High Court injunction last year the owners who took posession did nothing to bring this huge area back into use for housing. The sole interest seems to have been in selling it, recently it was sold and when the new owners didn’t bother with the 24 hour security on site it was reoccupied.
Some 30 people had been living in the various buildings that make up the Grangegorman complex prior to the High Court injunction. The injunction ment that those 30 all had to try and find alternative accommodation as a time when the housing crisis in Dublin has deepened and rents have soared above levels affordable even to someone earning two times the minimum wage.
The footage you are watching is the 20th Feb protest against the water charges in Dublin speeded up by a factor of four so it doesn’t take a long time to play. The match took place the Saturday before the general election is to take place in the south and it’s a good time to ask with the election drawing close is this really going to bring the changes we are looking for
This blog is kind of a repeat. What seems like ages ago, I posted Engels on The Housing Question and Proudhon which had an appendix on my planned reply to Marx’s The Philosophy of Philosophy. Imagine my surprise when – this weekend – I was looking for a quote from Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Progress and had a look at it again and discovered that the post was truncated – including the appendix on “The Housing Question.” Opps.
First off, happy New Year! I hope 2016 will be a good one – so far, it looks like it will be for me. Big changes are coming and that will probably mean, for a while, fewer articles and blogs. But, then, I’ve not been that prolific recently. I have, however, found the time to get a rare Kropotkin translation revised and which is presented below in full for the first time.
I spoke last night as part of the panel for the Dublin launch of We Make Our Own History, I’m going to expand my comments into an end of year ‘state of the movement’ article if I find time, in the meantime here is then audio of the meeting.
Dublin launch of ‘We Make Our Own History’ by Andrew Flood on Mixcloud
First off, I have posted my “A Few Thoughts on Anarchism” which has appeared in (I think) edited form in the new issue of Black Flag. It marks the 175th anniversary of Proudhon’s What is Property? and, as regular reader know, I do like marking anniversaries of the movement. It places anarchism in its intellectual and social context and disputes the notion that anarchism can be best considered as a fusion (or confusion) of liberalism and socialism. It is not.
An interview about the wave of occupations and evictions that took place in the first half of 2015 in Dublin.
It’s not really a secret to anyone paying attention but Renua have really blown their cover with their pre-budget submission. Far from being any sort or radical departure they are yet another party for the wealthiest 1% who have been plundering our labour with the aid of every previous government.
As Michael Taft explains "Renua has called for a flat-rate tax. It represents a massive transfer from the lowest income groups to the highest income groups. It will require low and middle income groups to fund not only their own tax cuts but even higher tax cuts for those on much higher incomes.
… they want to cut inheritance tax to 20 percent while raising thresholds to €500,000. Someone inheriting €1 million would gain over €150,000."
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality"