Workers Solidarity Movement

This year has seen a re-energised campaign for abortion rights  in Ireland, starting with the Action on X campaign at the beginning of the year but Youth Defense's awful billboard campaign over the summer invigorated pro-choice activists to take full scale action. On Saturday 29th September the March for Choice was organised to mark International Day for Decriminalisation of Abortion. This has also been organised a month ahead of a publication of a report on abortion from a government appointed expert group, which will examine how the Governement will handle the abortion issue.

Anti Deportation Ireland is having its campaign launch in October. In order to build a strong resistance, it needs funds for this.  On Saturday 29th September they will be having a night of music, dancing and fun from 21:00 until 03:00 at the Semora Spraoi Social Center suggested donation 8e waged, 5e unwaged.

Dublin March for the International Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion! Gather at the Spire and march to Merrion Square. This is a celebration of being pro-choice! A day of being pro-choice and proud, speaking up and speaking out, making our voices heard. Come and celebrate with us!

Making Change with Art and Film: Irish Premiere of ‘X is for Anonymous’ headlines a programme of selected short films and works on Choice followed by a discussion with film-makers and participants facilitated by Katie Gillum, Disposable Film Festival.

Screen for Choice
7.30pm Friday 28th September
Decriminalisation of Abortion Action Global Day 2012
Due to increasing numbers of attendees, we've had to move Screen for Choice to its fancy new home, Filmbase in Temple Bar. So, to recap:
FRIDAY, 7:30PM AT FILMBASE IN TEMPLE BAR. See you there! 

Luas tram drivers in Dublin have voted by a massive 93% margin for industrial action.  The drivers, members of SIPTU, balloted this week following their rejection of 2 Labour Court recommendations in a dispute about rest days and shift lengths.  (see previous story http://www.wsm.ie/c/dublin-luas-drivers-ballot-industrial-action-sept2012).

About 25 members of the Dun Laoghaire area Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT), joined by some friends from the Bray campaign, held a lively protest in the rain outside Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council's monthly meeting on Monday night (10th September). 

Luas Drivers in Dublin are expected to be balloted for Industrial Action this week following an overwhelming rejection of a Labour Court Recommendation. Drivers are seeking parity with other Safety Critical staff who recently received 23 extra rest days and maximum 8 hour shifts. Drivers currently work 9 hour shifts in what is considered an extremely stressful working environment. 

A day of networking and workshops organised by the Irish Choice Network which brings together several pro-choice groups and individual activists including from Choice Ireland, Action on X, RAG, Lashback and WSM.  Timetable is to be finalised but there will be two sets of workshop sessions with a few choices of workshop in each session.  Most will have a very practical activity focus, some will be about direct actions

About 700 people from all over Ireland took part in a evening march to the Dail last night to highlight the ongoing resistance to the attempt to impose the Household tax.  Although smaller than recent CAHWT protests because the march was at 5 o'clock on a working day in July it was still of significant size.  The timing was because this was the last day the Dail sits.  Below is a slideshow of photos our photographer took on the demonstration, many more photos will be found in our Facebook album of the march which you are encouraged to share.  There is a video of the march in the body of the article, click through to view it.

The WSM took part in Pride in Dublin over the weekend as part of the PINC! bloc. Below are a selection of images of the day captured by our photographers.

We've made a much larger collection available via the Pride 2012 album on the WSM Facebook page.  The slideshow above is a smaller selection of these images pulled from our photographers Flickr account. Images made available under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.