Workers Solidarity Movement

Monday's Anti-G8 march and rally through Enniskillen should undoubtedly be viewed as a huge success by everyone who attended it. Giving the fact of how the media, both the press and television, has played a full role in subjecting the population to weeks of sensationalist scare stories, it was a surprise that anyone even left their homes on Monday as the G8 leaders flew into Fortress Fermanagh.

In this 45 minute interview Sevinc who recently migrated from Turkey to Ireland provides context on the Gezi park struggle and the police repression from recent regional and left politics. Touches on the Turkish left & anarchist movement, LGBT & Kurdish struggles, the role of the Ultras, army & Police

Turkish anarchist on background to Gezi Park struggle in Istanbul - explanation for the left by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

A Irish emigrant to Australia and WSM supporter gives his story about working on building sites, unions and audio conversation with IWW. - The Industrial Workers of the World from the Americas to Australasia have historically formed the bedrock of a radical revolutionary tendency in the labour movement, fanning the flames of class war fighting for a radical union where power resides in at its base asserting the need to abolish wage slavery where workers take full control over their labour.

A few thousand took part in the annual mayday parade in Sydney this year with organisers claiming it was the largest in years.  This years event theme was a 'a proud past, a fighting future' which certainly matched the range of trade union banners on display and political groups of all shades including the James Connolly Society involving recent Irish migrants.

Around 2000 people took part in the Mayday march in Belfast on Sat 4th May.  The WSM were on the march and our photographer prepared the photo slideshow below, you will find more photos from Belfast Mayday in our Facebook album

If you are not familiar with the infamous Come Here to Me blog then you should really have a look at it or the book and join thousands of other readers finding out about social history in Dublin. There are over 2,000 stories on the site addressing many different facets of everyday life and culture in Dublin from forgotten lanes, to overlooked monuments through to stories about the Gards, the eating habits of Dubs, and clubbing in the 50's and everything in between. The site has won a number of awards over the years and two of the authors spoke at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair to a crowd of academics, librarians, archivists and many interested members of the general public.

300,000 public service workers may shortly be forced to strike, something that may very well transform the potential for radical politics in Ireland.  The purpose of this Open Letter is to provide information for activists who are not working in Public Services in order to explain the importance of the No vote to Croke Park. It is important in terms of the general struggle against austerity and we want to suggest some ways you can help make sure this fight is won, in particular by coming to a discussion of just that on Wednesday 8th May at 7.30 in the Teachers Club. (RSVP on Facebook)

This is a glimpse into a process of investigation into ourselves and each other. It’s neither the beginning nor the end and so it’s open to change. It’s never static. For now, at least, it’s the culmination of a year of conversations around what it might look like to be part of a movement that cultivates an environment of collective and self-care, support, revolutionary love and self-determination. The opinions that will follow are my own but i will use the word ‘we’ throughout this piece to reflect that these ideas were inspired by others and created through conversation and dialogue. I take responsibility for them but am open to suggestions and the possibility that they will change where better versions replace them.

This listing is a partial list of the organisations our members work in & with.

Workers Solidarity Movement
PO Box 1528, Dublin 8.
www.wsm.ie
Twitter - Facebook - Youtube

A question. If depression is the inability to construct a future, does depression not appear very like the world’s prevailing mood or zeitgeist right now?  As I write, the immense working majority faces into continued hierarchy, exploitation and polarisation, characterised by, among other things, ecological catastrophe, austerity without end, technocratic governance, nuclear annihilation, escalation of war... Compounding these dilemmas is our collective inability, real or illusory (I am not sure which), to construct an alternative future.

Today, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.  And yet. Something else is stirring. 2011 occasioned a shared, transnational impulse of ‘outrage’, ‘indignation’ and ‘enough’ against the cruelties of global financial institutions and the petty thuggery of enthralled states. The occupation of the world’s squares was simultaneously an impulse of ‘hope’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘the commons’, directed towards a dimly perceived yet somehow more just, more humane future. Tracking their emergence, evolution, fading, and re-emergence around the world – now in Cairo, then in Syntagma, here in Zuccotti Park, there in Puerta del Sol - Paul Mason, BBC journalist and author, has provided an insightful record and (somewhat more questionable) analysis of these revolts.