An interview with a couple of the people involved in The Barricade Inn, the squatted social centre on Parnell street, including a video tour of the interior.
Archives: Blog entry
A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
Sorry for the delay in blogging or, for that matter, posting articles. As usual, busy. Main focus has been getting the new issue of Black Flag ready for this year’s London Anarchist Bookfair. This year it is on Saturday, the 24th of October and is in a new location.
On a damp Sunday afternoon hundreds of Dubliners gathered to spell out a clear Refugees Welcome mention on Sandymount strand, opposite the iconic Pigeon House chimneys.
The organisers had said "Let’s tell our government that people in Ireland want to extend the Céad Míle Fáilte to the thousands escaping conflicts. European ministers are meeting on Monday 14th September to agree a new programme."
Two different futures are fighting to be born in this moment.
One the future of more effective border guards, of dragging refugees off trains and herding them into camps, of war without end, of hatred for the ‘other’, of wealth for a privilege few and immiseration for the masses.
The other future is glimpsed in the people quietly organising our own aid convoys to Calais, of solidarity with Rojava, of fighting for an equality that will be global in scope and from which no one will be locked out.
Which of those futures will you choose to feed?
There are many, many inspiring solidarity actions happening across Ireland at the moment. We’ve been following in particular the spontaneous formation of X to Calais groups around the county, modelled on the Cork to Calais one.
Before the government had indicated any intention to act these groups were formed in cities, towns and villages right across the country in order to collect needed supplies, form convoys and drive them to the migrant camps across Europe starting with the inspiring site of consistent self organised resistance at Calais.
One of the WSM memebrs was using his van to help transport refugee solidarity donations to Jigsaw, one of the Dublin sorting points of this grassroots initiative. He took a moment to shoot this quick video explainer showing the volume of materials that has poured in.
The inscription on the memorial to the Irish ‘Famine’ in Boston serves to remind us of much we should not have forgotten and how shameful some of our words today must sound to the millions who suffered then.
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.