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1000s march in Dublin International Women's Day 2018 as referendum to Repeal the 8th is finally confirmed
Date: Fri, 2018-03-09 12:02
The evening of March 8th evening saw thousands march through Dublin for Internationals Womens Day but also to demand Repeal of the 8th Amendment which bans abortion in Ireland. The governement have finally been forced to call a referendum to get rid of the 8th - speakers at the rally at the end talked about how this could come about and the formation of a new organisation to joinly campaign for repeal. Demonstrations and other events took place across Ireland to mark this.
The audio from the video of the march passing is overlaid with the WSM International Women's Day statement.
The rally at the end was something of a soft unofficial launch of the Together Yes campaign as at the start of the closing rally we were told a new coalition was to be launched and then there were three speakers from each of the constituent groups (video).
We weren't told the name (now announced as Together for Yes) but the speakers from the Coalition to Repeal, National Women's Council of Ireland and the Abortion Rights Campaign did a fine job of outlining the arguments to Repeal the 8th Amendment.
Sign up for the new coalitions email list at https://www.togetherforyes.ie/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Together4yes
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Together4yes/
SIPTU, Ireland’s largest trade union, supports repeal of the Eighth Amendment. Ethel Buckley spoke on behalf of SIPTU, she is the deputy general secretary (video).
SIPTU organises over 200,000 workers almost 100,000 of whom are women, they have been on the frontline of the fight for women’s equality for over a century. Their first generation of union leaders, among them James Connolly, Constance Markievicz, Helena Maloney were clear that the struggle for a woman’s right to vote, a woman’s right to decent work and a woman’s right to manage her own life was, is, and ever shall be a fight for the trade union movement.
For those curious about how many marched on this workday evening we used the Crowdsize App to calculate that no more than 6000 people could fit into the space the rally at the end occupied if it was densely packed. The end of the video is shot there so you can judge for yourself whether that's a densely packed crowd, we would estimate turnout in the 3,000 to 5,000 range on that basis.