Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
The recent Belfast Telegraph poll may have revealed cracks in the zero sum sectarian politics that dominates the political landscape in Northern Ireland but if there is anything that cannot be white washed away is the relevance of class. While we see a reoccurring positive pattern of more liberal attitudes towards issues such as gay marriage and abortion rights as well as growing younger population tuned off by orange/green style of politics, religion still remains the main factor in voting for political parties, while the constitutional question is settled for a generation. (1)
Seomra Spraoi will be hosting a night of film, food, music and other craic,
brought to you by the Dublin Squatters this Friday.
According to the organisers: "This event will be an opportunity for people to come along and enjoy an evening full of propaganda, crafts, food from The People's Soup Kitchen and the launch of a new zine based on the experiences of squatters. It would be a good time to meet up and keep up with what's been going on in Dublin and a chance to get informed about the last threat of eviction and discover how you can get involved with and support squatting in Dublin!"
Today (Weds) was very quiet; there was no eviction attempt. We were prepared for the worst, but no cops called around, nobody claiming to be the owner, nothing.Just to recap, we are preparing ourselves to resist eviction because previously, on Friday, two people claiming to be agents acting on behalf of a company, which they claimed own two of the houses, came to illegally board them up. When we weren't letting them do so, they called the cops. The cops decided not to do anything because they did not have the paperwork or legal authorisation to evict us[1]. However, the “owners” and the cops did say that they'd be back on Wednesday (today) with “papers”.
A group of political squatters in Dublin are facing eviction from a row of empty, unused, rotting houses in Lower Grangegorman. We got a chance to speak to them and hear their side of the story. They are calling for people to come and help them resist eviction from Wednesday onwards.
-- 300,000 empty houses in Ireland, 5,000 people homeless --
Over the last couple of years the WSM has been going through a process of re-examining the way we relate to people interested in what we have to say. Alongside this we have recently begun to try and get a better understanding of what it is we do. Both these processes have some major implications in reaching an understanding of what the usefulness of a revolutionary organisation is in the modern era of broad and loose social networks.

Leticia Ortega (WSM) conducts a joint interview with a woman seeking asylum and Luke Budha of Anti-Deportation Ireland (ADI) and the Anti Racism Network (ARN).

Privilege and the theory around it is a significant topic of debate at the moment among those interested in radical social change. Touching on many issues dear to the hearts of anarchists, it is hard to avoid.(i) Yet, the two are not fitting together as well as they should and there is a sense of unease about this. (ii) Much of this is because privilege theory has emerged from US academic circles rather than anarchist ones and, ironically, has been co-opted to protect middle- class privileges. (iii) This is a situation in need of repair if we are to maintain our links with feminist, anti- racist and other struggles against oppression. If we are to create a mass movement capable of social change then it has to be able to engage with everyone in the first place.

Guest writer, Dónal O’Driscoll, contributes to the ongoing discussion on intersectionality and privilege theory.
In this guest piece Damien Walshe, long term anti-racist activist, takes the opportunity to reflect on what happend in the last week when State authorities acted to take away blonde children from their Roma parents.
“Damned if they did something, damned if they did nothing”
A standard response (and the one trotted out by the Minister for Justice) is that it was best for the HSE/Gardai to err on the side of caution: “better be safe than sorry” has been the mantra. Okay, let’s have a look at that statement: What the danger was established in order to abduct the two Roma children from their families? Under the Child Care act children can be taken into care if a child has or is being assaulted, ill-treated, neglected or sexually abused, or whose health, development or welfare has been or is likely to be impaired or neglected. No one has remotely suggested this was the case for either child.
As is the case with most of my comrades, I did not suddenly wake up to find out that I am an anarchist. It was rather a gradual process that started with a determination to fight racism, challenge patriarchy and doubt the existence of some omnipresent old man with white beard.
I was born in 1987 to a Russian mother and a Georgian father in Siberia during the last years of the USSR and spent most of my childhood travelling back and forth between Russia and Georgia, changing different cities and schools and meeting people who were very eager to prove to me how much of a better nation Georgia is in comparison to Russia and vice versa. What affected my ideology the most was my family’s decision to move to Greece where I got to meet many interesting people and during the last years of school together with friends to start reading books on atheism, feminism and anarchy.
“Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.”
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
