Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
Border Crisis: Migration and Europe.
Date: Fri, 2017-03-31 11:59
For over a year, the European Union (one of the most prosperous areas on the planet), has been embroiled in a ‘crisis of immigration’ - the result of failed government responses to increased population inflows coming from the Middle East and Africa. The hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to travel to Europe are refused conventional safe entry and are forced to rely on criminal smugglers and dangerous land and sea routes. The predictable result has been a massive humanitarian crisis, concentrated at bottleneck transit points such as the Greek islands, and in sprawling migrant camps within and outside Europe. A great display of solidarity from transport workers as Bus Eireann strikers mount secondary pickets
Date: Fri, 2017-03-31 10:58
Inter city bus workers in Ireland launched widespread secondary pickets at 4am this morning. Solidarity from transport workers at the other services picketed meant that most of the country ground to a halt as morning rush hour approached, almost all trains, Dublin bus and light rail services did not operate.
How to organise a meeting
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:50
Organising requires getting together and making decisions, sharing information and organisational work. It only takes a few informal chats among any group of people before it becomes obvious that some structure is greatly needed in facilitating group functioning. Without structures and procedures people often forget what was agreed, what tasks were to be done and by whom, or when the next meeting is. Interview: Belfast Co-operatives.
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:48
Belfast has seen something of a surge of co-operatively run businesses in recent years as more people are faced with the choice between precarious work and unemployment with meagre dole payments. Belfast is now home to a taxi co-op, Union Taxis, a cleaning co-op, Belfast Cleaning Society, a co-operatively run café, Lúnasa, and a digital media co-op, The Creative Workers’ Co-Op - to name but a few. We sat down with Clem and Colin, two of the three members of the Creative Workers’ Co-Op, and Elena from Lúnasa to get their thoughts on co-ops in Belfast.What Is Anarchism?
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:46
Like almost any political term, ‘anarchism’ is very broad in scope and covers a huge range of ideas and practice. Instead of trying to give an exhaustive description, or detail everything that is and isn’t anarchism, this article will attempt to get to the heart of it, and capture the essence, as far as possible, at the core of anarchism. Giving a complete definition of such a broad term would take many more words than will fit here and has been done well in other places (e.g. An Anarchist FAQ).Domination, Capitalism, and Economic Crises.
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:45
The history of capitalism has been a of history domination; of landowners’ domination over tenants, of bosses’ domination over workers, of economically robust countries’ domination over developing economies. of bloody labour struggles, social struggles, and of many crises, which have the most devastating effect on the working class, those furthest away from the levers of power and influence. As the framework of capitalism has developed, its systems have expanded in complexity, but paradoxically also in fragility.Yes Equality? The limitations of the marriage equality referendum victory
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:43
We don’t understand words as simply words on their own, entirely dependent on their definition, as one word can have many different meanings. Context plays a big part in our understanding of words. There are some words that leave context with the responsibility of our understanding of what has just been said. The word “buckle”, for example, can either mean “to connect” or “to collapse”, two meanings opposite to each other, leaving us in need of context in order to understand the usage of the word.From apathy to rebellion: the water war in Ireland.
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:33
No one saw this coming, not even the veteran activists. Hundreds of thousands resisting neoliberal economic policies would have been difficult to imagine even at the height of the Campaign Against Home and Water Charges. Although that campaign, primarily fighting against the regressive Household Charge and the subsequent Property Tax, was nationwide, it never quite built the momentum that we’ve seen with the anti-water charges campaign, though not for lack of effort on the part of activists. The CAHWT failed in its objective of defeating the Property Tax, the resistance effort however was not in vain; it prepared the ground for the current phase of struggle.An account of how #Strike4Repeal went in Dublin
Date: Tue, 2017-03-28 15:25
Andrew spent the day of March 8th 2017 recording #Strike4Repeal and has edited this 20 minute video account of how the day went down in Dublin. Below you will also find a text transcript of his account.
I headed into Dublin early on #Strike4Repeal day because a little birds had told me of the plan to cover up and alter some of Dublin’s statues in the early morning.
Intersectionality - A Basic Primer
Date: Sun, 2017-03-26 00:00
The WSM’s politics are fundamentally intersectional. ‘Intersectionality’ is a fancy word for some rather basic ideas. You can think of it as ‘overlap-ism’ instead. There are three main points, 1) that each person needs to be seen as a whole, 2) that no power system exists in isolation, and 3) that all forms of oppression and exploitation should be uprooted at the same time.
The first point refers to the fact that real people aren’t cartoons. We are each complicated and multi-dimensional. For instance, a person is not just ‘working class’. They also have a gender. In general, life for a working class woman will be significantly different than for a working class man, not only because a woman is oppressed by sexism but because class itself is experienced differently.