Galway to Shannon for j18

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday January 15, 2003 17:25 by Harry Pollitt (fwd'ed by) - NUIG Eco. Soc. galwaytoshannon at yahoo dot com

Details of transport from Galway to Shannon this Saturday.

Galway students will travel to Shannon Airport on Saturday to support the campaign to oust U.S. warplanes from Irish airfields and airspace.

The student contingent will be acting in conjunction with other Galway-based anti-war activists, including members of Galway Alliance Against War, members of the Irish-Palestinian Solidarity Movement, and University lecturers, and will be joined in Shannon by anti-war contingents from across the length and breadth of the country.

The day will be marked by a large-scale demonstration at the airport to register the support of ordinary Irish people for the anti-war activists based in and around the recently-established Shannon Peace
Camp, as well as their revulsion at the complicity of the state in belligerent U.S. military campaigns, which have sharply and steadily increased since 2001.

The demonstration, called by the Irish Anti-War Movement, will be the latest flashpoint in a string of anti-war activity and actions which has grown in intensity to mirror that of the increased U.S. war effort, and increased Irish complicity therein.

Though anti-war activity has bristled in many urban centres of Ireland, Shannon has for obvious reasons been the focal
point of such efforts.

For over a year U.S. military use of the airport has been faithfully monitored by a small number of Shannon/ Limerick based activists.

In September 2001 a 22-year old student peace activist, Mr. Eoin Dubsky, breached airport security to daub a U.S. Special Forces Hercules plane with anti-war symbols.

More recently the airport has seen a number of large-scale demonstrations organised both by the IAWM and Grassroots activists, at one of which airport defences were seriously, and peacefully, breached so that the airport was brought to a standstill by means of a sit-down protest within the airfield perimeter.

Monitoring of U.S. military activity at Shannon has recently been immeasurably bolstered by the establishment of a permanent Peace Camp outside the Airport gates.

Coupled with this development, as well as rapidly growing public awareness of and revulsion towards Ireland’s complicity in the U.S.’s middle eastern witch-hunt, Saturday’s march is set to draw record numbers of concerned citizens to Shannon, to indict the Irish government for their flaunting of the constitution and to implore them to reject any friendly role in George W. Bush’s terror.

The student bus will leave from the Quadrangle at N.U.I., Galway at 11.30 a.m. sharp on Saturday. Reservations can be made via email at galwaytoshannon@yahoo.com, or at 086 303 9787.

A bus run by Galway Alliance
Against War will be leaving from Merchant’s Road at 11.45 a.m.