No protest - no manipulation

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday May 08, 2002 12:20 by fuinseog

Thursday's protest has been, on best interpretation, called as an instant knee-jerk reaction, and on worse interpretations, called as an attempt to make political capital out of this for particular organisation(s)or even as a chance for the establishment to discredit the victims of Garda attack.

I think the Thursday protest should be called off. What happened on Monday was v. significant because

1 of the level of attack on media including mainstream media,

2 the large numbers of passers-by witnessing and because,

3 unlike the Burlington, Garda action was completely unprovoked. (At the Burlington, the Guards were acting in response to the attempted storming of the hotel and flour bombs etc. were thrown.)

The above means that there is a real opportunity to substantially reduce the level of Garda violence in this country. While this is not quite global revolution it is a very real issue for those who get their heads broken. We must not lose our moral high ground.

Thursday's protest has been, on best interpretation, called as an instant knee-jerk reaction, and on worse interpretations, called as an attempt to make political capital out of this for particular organisation(s)or even as a chance for the establishment to discredit the victims of Garda attack.

The political situation we are now in is too delicate to allow a need to express anger and other emotions to leave us vulnerable to manipulation and/or misrepresentation.

However, notice of the protest is now in mainstream media, so people will turn up. We need to consider what will greet them. I expect
nice shiny new SWP style placard saying something vaguely aggressive, megaphone chanting also aggressive, GR/SWP spokespeople talking to the media and of course freshfaced enthusiastic newspaper sellers. The rest of us will not have organised to counter this. I humbly suggest that the RTS organisers such as they are might consider the following:

A leaflet/press release to all attending with the following:

1 What is RTS?
2 Who called this protest
3 Why RTS didn't call the protest
4 Why RTS would prefer people just went off for a pint and a chat about what they suffered/saw/thought on Monday

I hope this is of use, and my sympathy to all those tending their bruises and broken bones.