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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
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The post Teachers Will Be Trained to Challenge ?Whiteness? in Schools appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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The post Diverse Man Interrupts ?Festival of Diversity? in Solingen by Stabbing Eleven People, Killing Three appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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The post Billionaire Founder of Telegram Arrested in France appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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The post DEI Is Dead. Long Live HR appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3Some good points raised there. I presume when you say: 'This was why they argued that Dublin South west should stand 7-10 candidates' -I presume you are referring to candidates for the council?
And on this point: At no stage did the working class try to build the campaign into a working class fighting force. -I assume you are referring to the lack of people getting involved rather than the various parties trying to push people to get involved even though I know all the Left political parties are always looking for people to help out. On the lack of people coming forward, I think this is very much tied up in the type of society we live in and the media environment that we all swim in. Its hard to know where to get the answers or how to change the situation. One thing that I noticed myself during the early days of the Property Tax campaign was the huge number of people who complained who normally wouldn't voice any concerns, but when it came to getting involved or attending any kind of protest, they did absolutely f**k all.
Pat Wine's thoughtful, but plaintive article touches on shortcomings in "the left's engagement with the working class" and its failure to get its act together to defeat politically the dominant support for the neo-liberal economic tendency in Irish society and presumably in the wider international world. In response T makes the plaintive point that after one big turnout to protest against the Property Tax the majority of people most affected by neoliberalism have done f***all to bring about political change. Both Pat W and T have stated the obvious, which needs to be stated and repeated until more people face the status quo reality in our society.
As I get on in years I have noted different generations of pre-split Sinn Fein, the Worker's Party, the Socialist Labour Party, the CPI and even the frenetic student-driven anti-nuclear power movement of more than 35 years ago all trying in their varied ways to galvanise popular opinion towards the achievement of social and political objectives. Great energy and often novel imagination ran their courses, and normal middle-of-the-road politics prevailed. I despair that our society has two kinds of response to the economic system - spectators and activists. The spectators constitute possibly 95 per cent of the population and the activists in all parties make up the minority 5 per cent. And what a fraction of that 5 per cent act in pursuit of radical objectives!
Too many people in the disadvantaged sectors of urban and rural society just want to be spectators. Activism, as they have seen it done by activists, is not for them. It is sad but that is how it is. The local elections will bring many interesting new people into the arena of representative politics, and the vote switch in the European election towards radical candidates outside mainstream orthodoxy will be amazing. Good luck to all these candidates. But activism will remain a choice for the minority. I know how I'll vote next week, but I can't offer suggestions for reducing the spectator mentality among victims of neo-liberal dominance.
This next workshop of the Cooley Environmental And Health Group should be of great interest to many as it will address issues relating to Leadership and Participation in the context of Community Development and Local Government. Events in recent years have reinforced the perception that local communities are increasingly losing control over their own destinies as more and more of the decisions that affect us are made in Brussels or the headquarters of multinational corporations. Government at national level seems to be more interested about meeting the demands of the IMF and the ECB than caring about the needs of its own people, while at local level government appears to be becoming increasingly undemocratic and technocratic. The County Community and Voluntary Forums, which were intended to facilitate the voice of local and voluntary groups are a failed entity, and the likelihood is that they will be replaced by new structures in the ongoing reform of local government, possibly along the lines of Public Participation Networks as proposed by Social Justice Ireland (link). The objective of the Workshop will be to discuss what needs to be done to broaden participation in the decision-making process and to restore more control to ordinary people over their futures. To this end, and in keeping with the principles we hope to encourage, we would like to extend an invitation to all groups or individuals with an interest in local democracy to participate in the organization of the Workshop.
If you have an interest in the topics we propose to debate, please feel free to send us a submission or (better still) join us at our next meeting in the Strand Hotel Omeath at 10am on Sunday 12th September when we will be discussing the format of the Workshop.
The provisional title of the winter workshop is, "Leadership and Participation: Community Development and the Demise of Local Government." The time fixed for the workshop is Saturday 24 January 2015 from 14:00 until 17:30. The likely venue is The Strand, Omeath, Co. Louth.