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His memory lives forever. The fight against British colonial occupation of Ireland continues.
Via Carlos Martinez
struggle-la-lucha.org
Struggle-La Lucha is publishing this recent statement by Aurora Women’s Club on the fight for reproductive rights in the U.S. and worldwide.
Aurora is a revolutionary, anti-fascist women’s organization based in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Donetsk and the entire Donbass mining region in eastern Europe have been subject to five years of war and economic blockade by the U.S.-backed government of Ukraine, at the cost of more than 10,000 lives so far. Nevertheless, these young women and allies continue to carry out internationalist solidarity.
The right to abortion is a matter of women’s emancipation, a class question.
Those who advocate a ban of abortion falsely call themselves fighters for life – “pro-lifers.” In fact, they condemn women to disease, death and a miserable existence, especially workers, and all those who face discrimination and oppression. As before, conservatives call women who have abortions immoral, crying about “those killed in the womb of the mother,” claiming authority to talk about spiritual matters.
We need the full breadth of reproductive rights. And we are fighting for a society where a woman is entitled to decide whether to be a mother or not. Where quality medicine is available to every person. Where raising children is the business of the whole society, not just the mother. Where we will not have to count the pennies from our paychecks, be afraid of layoffs and crises, and finally we will be able to live and create the future.
Women’s struggle for reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, is an important part of our common struggle for a better world.
We are united with those who defend these rights — in Argentina, the United States, Ireland, Poland and any other country in the world.
By Kathleen Durkin
Joyous celebrations are taking place throughout Ireland as women cheer a historic victory in the 35-year struggle for their basic human rights and reproductive choice. A long, hard fight by the women’s movement won a landslide vote on the May 25 referendum that repealed the anti-abortion Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution.
Orla O’Connor, co-director of Together for Yes, the umbrella group comprising over 70 organizations and communities that carried out this struggle, called it “a monumental day for women in Ireland.” She said the vote was “a rejection of an Ireland that treats women as second-class citizens,” reported the May 26 Guardian newspaper.
Linda Kavanaugh, organizer of the Abortion Rights Campaign, a co-leader of Together for Yes, said the votes for this “definitive mandate” outnumbered the votes for inserting the amendment in 1983. Grassroots, community-led organizing was key to the long-awaited victory, she stressed.
She especially acknowledged the work of “migrants who did not have a vote and who were disproportionately affected by the Eighth [Amendment], as well as the many trans and non-binary people affected.”
The landslide vote to repeal the eighth amendment has been hailed as a “momentous day for the people of Ireland” by Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald.
The people of the 26 Counties voted by 66.4% to 33.6% to remove the 8th amendment from the constitution, paving the way for liberalisation of abortion legislation.
The resounding victory for the Yes campaign was announced in Dublin castle shortly after 6pm.
Almost all constituencies across the state voted to repeal the 8th amendment, with only Donegal voting to retain it.
Welcoming the result of the referendum, Sinn Féin Leader Mary Lou McDonald thanked all those who campaigned and voted for a yes vote and said it was a clear indication that Ireland is changing.
“The old certainties being challenged, and a new and better Ireland is emerging,” she said.
“It is a day when those who had be silenced demanded to be heard. A day when we decisively broke from the past
“A day when the people said, ‘This is our time, this is our Ireland’.
“I want to thank all those who campaigned, and in particular the women who spoke publicly about private tragedies in order to make this country a better place for all.
“My thoughts today are with all those who have suffered and those who have died, as a result of an amendment that should never have been in the constitution. My solidarity goes out to them and their families,“ she added.
By Ian Ó Dálaigh
On Nov. 15, 2014, a spontaneous protest took place in Jobstown, Tallaght, an overwhelmingly working-class area in southwest Dublin. Labour Party leader Joan Burton, who at the time was also tánaiste [26-county deputy prime minister], was delayed in a car for just over two hours by a sit-down protest.
The protest was directed against the vicious austerity measures of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition [government]. These measures included cuts to social welfare benefits, disability benefits, and pensions, and attempts to impose a water tax. As both minister of social protection and tánaiste, Burton played a key role in these attacks.
Nineteen of the protesters (18 adults and one teenager), including our own Scott Masterson, were arrested and charged with false imprisonment in the wake of this. The teenager has already been convicted.
The trial ran for just over eight weeks, culminating on June 29, 2017, when the jury gave a unanimous “not guilty” verdict for the Jobstown 7. The Jobstown Not Guilty campaign is now calling for the immediate dropping of all charges against the other 11 accused, as well as the quashing of the conviction of the 17-year-old in relation to the protest.
By Sukant Chandan
I remember visiting Derry around 2004 and was outside a friends house of Westland St (famous street that goes uphill from the ‘Welcome to Free Derry’ wall in the Bogside), this is an Irish working class area, my girlfriend at the time and I were bickering in the early morning, Martin McGuinness walks by as he lived a few doors down, on his way to get his morning newspaper he walked passed us with a smirk at our bickering, I said good morning, he reciprocated. lol. Was just a funny moment I remember. I said to my girlfriend laughing at the situation, who was a militant anti-imperialist herself anyway 'you know that was Martin McGuinness, former leader of the IRA?’, I think she was more interested in carrying on our little argument which lasted hardly a few more minutes.
Anyway, just a little silly-funny anecdote, but Martin lived in his own working class community all his life, as was approachable always.
I make no apology that I love the IRA, the IRA was one of the the greatest things to happen to Humanity, the great resistant Irish people with the IRA fought with great ferocity the greatest colonialist murders ever known, the Irish fighting the dirty brits has always inspired great admiration and love across the victims of the brits especially from us Indian peoples. I don’t celebrate the death and injury of any innocents caught up in the Irish revolutionary wars or any wars, but the political struggle that we wage is our main primary path to freedom.
cnn.com
As women around the world wore red for International Women's Day, crowds in Ireland donned black and went on strike to protest the country's abortion ban.
People across the country walked out of their offices and joined a day of action dubbed “Strike 4 Repeal,” urging the government to hold a constitutional referendum to scrap Ireland’s eighth amendment – a measure that places the right to life of an unborn child on equal footing with the right to life of the mother.
The amendment, passed in 1983, prohibits abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or ill health of the mother, allowing it to be considered only when a woman’s life is in immediate danger. There has never been a referendum put forward to repeal the amendment since it was instated.
By Zach Gevelinger
On July 6, 2013, while on vacation in Belfast, in the northern six counties of British-occupied Ireland, I visited a female political prisoner for her birthday and wound up arrested under Section 41(b) of the 2000 UK Terrorism Act, not knowing when or if I’d ever get out.
The prisoner was held in Hydebank jail on suspicion of trying to assassinate two police officers in May. Though we were allotted two hours to visit, the administration stopped the meeting short and escorted me to the visitors area. There they arrested me.
I was in complete shock. My first thought was “I’m fxcked.” The Police Service of Northern Ireland confiscated my phone, camera and other belongings. I was handcuffed and taken to the parking lot, where I was put in a car with three PSNI officers.