Workers Solidarity Movement

Hundreds of people responded to the High Court demanding the eviction of Apollo House by linking arms to form a protective ring around it.  The judge  refused the residents an extra week to find accommodation despite the housing minister failing to deliver what had been promised.

Ireland is in the depths of a severe homelessness crisis, with 7,000 people without a home. With the government refusing to act, some activists in Dublin did.  Apollo House was occupied by Home Sweet Home Eire on the 15th December, to intervene in the housing crisis and to save lives.

There are around 190,000 vacant buildings in Ireland, that's 27 houses for every homeless person.

This video was shot on the morning of the Apollo House injunction hearing at the High Court, 21st December.  As well as footage from outside the courts on our way there we had earlier visited the sites of other occupied buildings evicted in the last 20 months. We discovered all of them were still vacant and in most cases no visible work at all had been done on them.

Monday night saw dozens of anti-racist campaigners gather at the French embassy to protest the eviction of Calais refugee camp.  France is heading into an election and the eviction which will see thousands of people taken out of the camp is seen as an election stunt by President Hollande seeking to win right wing votes.  

Hundreds of people marched through Dublin on Saturday to protest the conviction of a Jobstown teen for false imprisonment.  He had been part of a protest which delayed Labour Party leader Joan Burton who had made an unwelcome visit to the community resulting in a sit down in front of her car as she left the area.  The delay in her being able to leave resulted in dawn raids on the houses of activists across Jobstown and in the trial of many of them for false imprisonment.

The speeches given before and after March for Choice 2016 provided a broad introduction, through the personal stories of the speakers, to the complex intersecting oppressions imposed by the 8th Amendment on women along with some trans-men and non binary people in Ireland. An oppression that doubles up on those who are also in the Asylum system, disabled, or Travellers.  If you are used to protests where the speeches are mostly from politicans telling you what you already know this wasn't one of them.

Tuesday 3rd October evening hundreds of Polish women and their allies gathered outside the Polish consulate in Dublin to protest the anti-woman bill being pushed in the Polish parliament that will criminalise women who have abortions in all circumstances. Ahead of last nights 'Dublin - Solidarity with Polish Women on Strike' protest the organisers said;

This is more than a little odd. It appears that someone prominently associated with Youth Defence was on the March for Choice in September complete with a (fake) Repeal jumper and an obnoxiously phrased placard. Another activist on the way to the march saw the same women with one of the Youth Defence leaders.

Dave Gorman spotted her and tweeted about it from the march, that tweet was subsequently shared by 100s of people, all no doubt curious as to what was up. Our video reporter at the march had noticed the woman pass and while initially thinking the placard made her look like a Youth Defence infiltrator but also thought it was possible it was someone who had English as a second language. She was recorded in the video though, the segment is attached proceeded by Dave's tweet alerting people which we only saw later.

August 31st outside the GPO in Dublin and over 100 people gather to protest at the Turkish invasion of northern Syria.  The invasion seems to be intended to stop the two sections of Rojava linking up - a linkup would cut off ISIS from the Turkish border.

The demonstration was called by Rojava Calling and Saoirse Jin groups.  Saoirse is the Irish word for Freedom and Jin the Kurdish word for women. There were speakers from the Kurdish community, political organisations including the WSM and Sinn Fein and a trade union speaker.  You can hear most of these speeches in the video.

Last night (18 August) saw a protest against homophobic attack in Phoenix park take place at the Central Criminal Court at Parkgate street.