Workers Solidarity Movement

In a pattern all to common across rural Ireland hundreds of Yes posters were torn down in an organised fashion by what had to be No activists across Country Cork last night.  This anti-democratic rage typifies the No campaign which has has so much wealth that it is printing 10 No posters to every Yes.  All across Ireland the few Yes posters there are to distribute have been torn down, in one case we have heard of in the west they have even been discovered in the houses of No campaigners.  This is ahead of the May 25th referendum to remove the article of the Irish constitution that equates the life of a women with that of a foetus.

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to have the time to spend canvassing Swords for a Yes in the upcoming referendum on the 8th amendment with great gang of volunteers. This was a weekend when Together For Yes was organising big canvasses in towns that we knew had to be covered. Naas, Swords and Navan along with other towns were all being canvassed this weekend.

With just under two weeks to the Repeal referendum pro-choice activists from Belfast travelled across the border to help canvass Cavan for Yes this weekend.

In the week before the 1995 divorce referendum the catholic bishops put out a statement commanding their flock to vote No. The WSM reacted to this by putting up posters reading 'The bishops; They hid priests who raped children and now they want to lecture us about morals.." illustrated with a photograph of Father Brendan Smyth who had raped at least 143 children and whose religious order had hid these actions from the police. The enquiry had found that "..despite knowing his history of abusing children, the Norbertine religious order moved Smyth to different dioceses where he abused more children.."

"Oh, you're going to start quoting the pro-choice Irish Times are you?! Why don't you come over here and I'll give you some *real* statistics!".

If you’ve been following online debates about Repeal you will have seen many, many references to Soros as supposedly funding the Yes campaign, even though much of the money was raised very publically when Together for Yes held an online fundraiser that brought in 550,000 euro from over 10,000 people.   The use of the George Soros’ name by right wing ideologues to discredit left wing movements is nothing new and speaks to an racist  stereotype, one associated in particular with the Nazis, of the Jewish financier influencing political decision-making through shadow channels and dirty tricks.

A few hours ago the referendum campaign in Ireland took an unexpected turn when google announced it was banning all referendum based advertising across all its platforms including Youtube. The howls of outrage from the anti-choice No campaign has been going on ever since.

This reaction across the No campaigns is telling. For the first time spokespeople are posting about No losing the referendum & suggesting the whole vote is rigged. Which makes you wonder what nasty online ads they were intending to run in the last 10 days?

Over the last few days the mainstream media in Ireland has finally woken up to the way money from far right US evangelicals is being used to buy the No vote in the referendum campaign. Here we show you how to see how you are being targeted and discuss what this means for the referendum and any conception of democracy not based on the ‘one dollar, one vote’ favoured by the elite.

There is a poetic symbolism to the images here of the artist Maser’s Repeal the 8th mural at the Project Arts centre. (additional images in comments section) The art is covered up. A government body orders a theatre space to cover up a mural of a heart, leaving just half a heart in its wake.

The line from the Charities Regulator is that the Project Arts is excluded from taking a stance on Repeal because that would be ‘advancing a political cause’ that does not relate to their charitable purpose of their arts space.

The referendum to remove the clause in the constitution that limits what medical care, including abortion, women in Ireland can access approaches at the end of this month. With another poll appearing this morning we have updated our graph of how that May 25th vote would look IF the polling companies had a similar margin as they had for the Marriage Equality referendum a couple of years back. As you can see they suggest if nothing changes the result of the May 25th, Repeal vote will be too close to call until the count on the 26th.