Last week I edited the last of the audio recordings from the 2012 Dublin anarchist bookfair and got them online. Each year we try and record any of the suitable sessions and get them up shortly after the bookfair. This is never 100% successful as the hectic nature of the day along with random technical and other difficulties always manages to sabotage some recordings, this year was better than most as I we ‘only’ missed 3 of the targetted 9 sessions. The audio from the 6 that made it are below, its almost 9 hours worth of listening in all so don’t eat it all in one sitting.
I was on the panel for the 2012 Dublin Anarchist bookfair discussion of the continued usefulness of old / print media. It was a well set up panel with a good range of people from publications following quite different models of print and distribution. I’ve included the write up of the session and the audio and video I recorded and edited of it below. For the curious the video was taken by a Go Pro Hero2 camera which I’d placed on the edge of the table as an experiment which turned out to be ‘good enough’ to use.
The Dublin Mayday march took place this year in appaling weather conditions which meant many of the 1000 or so who started out never made the final rally at Liberty Hall. As you’ll see from the pictures on the Quays machers were literally being wrapped up in their own banners by the wind and rain. The WSM called an anti-authoritiarian bloc in which around 60 people took part and about 40 went to the social afterwards.
After a gap of some 6 years Reclaim the Streets returned to Dublin on April 28th with a few hundred people taking part. Apart from Garda initally acting the bully boys with regards to people openly consuming alcohol there was no hassle and a good time was had by all. The organisers press release along with a slide show of the better photos I took on the day is below.
Every so often you find yourself taking a different position to the rest of the left, an interesting experience as the shrill denunciations pour in because you’ve dared to depart from orthodoxy. The so called ‘Austerity’ or ‘Stability’ referendum in Ireland has proved to be one of those occasions because the WSM has dared to argue that they referendum is in fact meaningless. And in particular we disagree with the standard left line that it can be treated as a referendum on austerity.