Bloody Sunday March For Justice January 29 2017

Event Details

 

Bloody Sunday was inflicted on the people of Derry.  But it has resonated around the world.  It is a local issue relevant to people everywhere.

Over the 45 years since British paratroopers erupted into the working-class Bogside area with rifles spitting death at civil rights marchers, representatives of victims of State violence from both sides of the Atlantic, from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, have travelled to Derry to take part in the annual commemoration and give substance to the idea of 'One World, One Struggle'. 

The British Government still sets its face Iike flint against telling the full truth about the Derry massacre.  A long Inquiry reported in 2010 that all the dead and wounded had been unlawfully shot. Despite this, the Report stopped well short of proposing prosecution of the killers - and pointed no finger of`blame at the senior military officers who had sent the Paras in, or at the politicians who had connived at the assault and then orchestrated a cover-up.

 Lectures, debates and cultural events are highlighted, economic  struggles, women’s rights, gay rights, the rights of the environment, and many other examples of`oppression.  We have commemorated too, the killing of other innocent people by non-State groups - Dublin Monaghan, Birmingham, Shankill, Greysteel, the Ormeau bookies, etc.

We believe that the programme we have produced this year puts Bloody Sunday in its proper context, an extreme example of the fact that, commonly, it’s innocent people who pose no threat to anyone who bear the brunt of conflict.

The trek towards truth and justice has been long and sometimes arduous. But we keep on keeping on because the cause is just and gives good example to the one world in which we all struggle.

This is always the way when it comes to the violence of imperialism.

Only the persistence of family members and their supporters forced a police investigation. We await the outcome. One reason the British authorities fear the facts about Bloody Sunday is that this massacre cannot be ascribed to warring Irish factions. This was an authentically British atrocity.

Past commemorations have featured African Americans, Palestinians, former Guantanamo prisoners, victims of police violence in Britain etc., as well as members of other families bereaved by murder here in the North, in many cases murder inflicted by State agents and then systematically lied about to protect the same undercover agents.

 

 

 

Source: bloodysundaymarch.org/for_justice/

Dublin Says No National Demonstration - Maith Sibh go Léir!

by James Quigley

A Dublin Says No poster advertising a National Demonstration, Dublin, January 21, 2017 - A non-politically aligned people's movement event.

"Shall we weep, moan, rend our garments, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ashes?  Shall we sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of republics?  Shall we cower in the shadows and sing glamorous dirges for the 'Lost Cause', for vanished glories and broken dreams?
 
Or shall we come out fighting, unbowed, heads high, laughing fools to scorn, rejecting at every turn the moral authority of murderers and thieves to rule our lives or determine our reality or act in our name?  Let's dispense with lamentation - give not a single moment to that emotional indulgence - and get right back to work, more determined than ever to bear down harder, dig deeper and excavate the radioactive nuggets of truth still glowing beneath the slag-heap of ruin."  Chris Floyd, Nov 5, 2004, 'No Ways Tired'.

 

A national demonstration took place in Dublin yesterday orgainised by Dublin Says No.  According to the organisers it was 'A Non-Politically Aligned People's Movement Event' and they called on the people of Ireland to stand together, united against:  Evictions, Homelessness, Water Charges, Soaring Rents, Repossessions, Health Cuts, Slave Job Schemes, Child Poverty, Hospital Waiting Lists, Patients on Trolleys, Suicide Epidemic, Socail Injustice, Mass Emigration, Income Inequality, Pensioner Poverty, Politicl Pay & Pensions, Corportate Tax Avoidance, TTIP/CETA, Natural Resources Fleeced."  In short a demonstration against austerity measures that have been dished out on the Irish people.
 
 Mr Paddy Healy described it as "a great first step" and said "Maith Sibh go Léir! Congratulations to the participants and to the organisers of the demonstration to-day.  It was fitting that it took place on the anniversary of the first meeting of the First (all-Ireland) Dáil . The statement read by Pól Ó Scanaill, National Organiser of the 1916 Societies, was truly inspiring!"


 

Despite realistic criticism by some marchers and comments on facebook about the size of the attendance at the demonstration, credit indeed must go to the organisers for pulling off this feat at all.  Not only was the group of activists operating with scant financial resources but they were up against quite an array of obstacles not least the lack of support from most of the main leftist actors in the present day Irish political scene and some so called progressive forces such as Right2Water Ireland and it's controlling unions. 

There was a comment in Right2Water Ireland's facebook page which summed it up, one I wholeheartedly agree with.  The comment queries why a notice about the demonstration was put up only 2 days prior to the event.  It stated "Mr Ogle you should have gotten behind this protest a lot sooner by advertising on Right2Water's page, all hands on deck for every protest it's the only way we are going to get proper results" 
   
This event marks a defining moment, in my view,  a concrete example of a division and lack of unity in left/radical politics in Ireland today.  It is one of agenda driven, top down, personality centered protest.   This national demonstration was a strike at bringing back the power of protest to ordinary people, a 'bottom up' approach which, apart from the obvious, seemed to be trying to create an effective, united and non-political aligned people's movement.  

As such this demonstration was successful and we hope it is indeed the first step.
   
While armani suited Sinn Féin TD's were in town on the very day of the protest, discussing unity in their 'Toward a United Ireland' event, it was ironic that in reality they practiced disunity by not taking part in such a people's national demonstration.  They neither supported it nor did they acknowledge it, not even a little mention in their multifaceted media outlets.
  
 Finally it is depressing to think but it has to be mentioned and the question asked why the Irish left parties such as People Before Profit and Anti Austerity Alliance were noticeably absent from the demonstration and indeed why they did not support it wholeheartedly and call for support for such a people's power protest.


  

Protesting is not a crime - Jobstown protesters' court case looming

 

Below is an extract from the Jobstown Not Guilty pamphlet ‘Protesting Is Not a Crime’.   Download full document here #jobstownnotguilty 

On October 21 2016 a 17 year oldwas found guilty of false imprisonment in the Children's Court, Dublin.  Now seven adult protesters will face trial on April 24 2017 for false imprisonment in the Central Criminal Court of Justice.

 

 

 

Judge John King found a 17 year old student guilty of false imprisonment – a verdict a barrister described as “a recipe for totalitarianism”.

This related to an anti water charges protest in Jobstown, Tallaght in Dublin on 15 November 2014, where then Tánaiste Joan Burton’s car was delayed for 2 ½ hours by a spontaneous community protest.

The 18 adults now awaiting trial from April 2017 face sentences up to life imprisonment. The trials, which will be six to eight weeks long, themselves will place enormous stress and strain on the defendants. If jailed, families would be left in very difficult situations, with jobs lost and parents in prison. If TD Paul Murphy is jailed for more than six months, he will be removed as a TD, denying the democratic choice of people of Dublin South West.

 

 

The political establishment and the supportive media are desperate to tarnish the anti water charges movement as a violent, anti-democratic mob.  By grossly misrepresenting and using what happened in Jobstown they want to weaken our democratic rights and so make it easier to impose economic inequality.

The laws used to directly seize the Property Tax from wages or benefits as well as the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (RDMPI) legislation used to rob the wages of public servants, show that this attack is real.

The definition of ‘false imprisonment’ is being changed and this affects you. Any temporary delay or obstruction at a protest or picket, which for example inconveniences a politician, could be deemed false imprisonment. This is about intimidating people and criminalising protest.

Please read this information booklet. If you agree that a miscarriage of justice is being prepared, help us because together we can stop this attack on democratic right and change Ireland for the better.

 

 

Source: #jobstownnotguilty