Workers Solidarity Movement

Saturday saw the annual anti-choice parade and yet again RTE reported a grossly inflated figure of the number marching.  They headlined it as ‘tens of thousands’ and in the body of the article quoted the organisers claiming 70,000 without further comment, appearing to endorse it.  As we are going to show below at the very least that’s a tenfold exaggeration, in fact by our count about 5300 people took part.  And while that estimate might be out by 10 or even 20% its physically impossible for it to be out by up to 1500% as that would require ten people too fit into a one meter square space.

We use the same counting methodologies (see below) for almost every demonstration that takes place in Dublin, from huge anti water charges protests to smaller but still significant ones on a huge range of issues.  We do these sorts of counts more than a dozen times a year.  We don’t always publicise the numbers we reach - organisers always tend to overestimate somewhat, most often guessing a figure that is twice what actually attended.  Generally we agree with what the demands of a demonstration are so we don’t want to appear to undermine it by publicly providing real numbers.  But we do count, we do use those counts internally in the WSM and we often communicate them directly to organisers. 

Over 100 people gathered outside Gianna Care, the rogue ‘pregnancy counselling’ clinic on Dorset Street, to express their anger and disgust after their bogus service was exposed by a journalist, who went undercover as a pregnant woman seeking advice for her crisis pregnancy.

In case you missed it, the pope is set to visit Ireland in 2018. Archbishop Eamon Martin has said that this visit will be used to campaign against abortion, and that the church will run a much stronger campaign against it than what they did on marriage equality.

When the pope came to power in 2013 he was hailed and celebrated by liberals as some sort of radical who was single handedly going to bring the church into the 21st century. With statements such as the now famous "who am I to judge?" in regards to LGBT+ people you could almost have been fooled that the liberals were right.

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.

About 200 people took part in a protest last night at the misleading pregnancy advise centre on Berkely road exposed yet again by a Times investigation, see their video below.

This protest was organised at very short notice by Real-Productive Health. They had organised a protest about a year back as well but this operation has been misleading women in crisis for about a decade with similar protests happening on many occasions over those years.

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

An important demonstration against homophobia takes place tonight in Dublin in the aftermath of a frightening mob attack on a Polish gay man in the Phoenix park at the end of last month. The protest will take place on the steps of the Parkgate street court complex because of its location close to the scene of the attack and because of the Garda disinterest in investigating it.

As the organisers of tonights protest explain “On 30th July 2016 a gay man was viciously attacked in Phoenix Park by a gang of over 10 young men. They made homophobic threats and insults, chased him, hit him with an iron bar and made him fear for his life by beating him and attempting to run him over in a car. He ran, screaming for help until he found someone and the gang finally fled. He was taken to hospital and treated for his injuries.

Due to a small group of sexist whingers, the beautiful Repeal the 8th mural by Maser at Project Arts in Dublin has been removed.

Over 200 letters of support were sent to the centre thanking them for their support of the campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, which equates the life of a foetus to that of the mother and sees that anyone who has an abortion in Ireland will spend 14 years in jail.

Dublin City Council claimed the mural was in violation of the Planning and Development Acts and that the mural changes the tone of the street and impacts on the area. If they think a bit of street art is bad they’d want to take a look at how denying bodily autonomy to half the population and treating them like criminals impacts upon people.

We have mobilised for and will be covering the Belfast Rally for Choice today via on Facebook and Twitter accounts. Below is a last minute message from the organisers.

Today we march, and today they march.

For the first time on this island there will be mass mobilisations of the pro choice movement and the anti choice movement.

This is a personal account from a member who was recently subjected to a sexist, homophobic attack. This post mentions male violence, anti-choice mentality, and the toxicity of masculinity.

Toxic masculinity has been a trending topic of discussion lately with the case of Brock Turner who raped an unconscious woman and received a meagre 3 months in jail for his atrocious crime, and the homophobic Orlando shooting committed by Omar Mateen a week ago which claimed the lives of 49 people and injured over 50.