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Anti-Empire
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia 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.
Lockdown Skeptics
Voltaire NetworkVoltaire, international edition
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Student March a Turning Point![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The events of the student march on Wednesday the 3rd of November were a turning point in the attitude of the state towards the general populace. As we look down the barrel of what is likely to be the harshest budget in the history of the country, the Government can no longer contain the anger of the Irish people. What happened on Wednesday was proof of this. After closely following the events of Wednesday’s student march in Dublin from the relative comfort of my small abode in Cork, for reasons which I will get into at a later date, I believe that students in Ireland, and Irish society at large, have reached a turning point in its relationship with the Government and its various arms. For students, Wednesday was all about voicing their protestations at the Government due to upcoming budget which is undoubtedly going to put even more financial pressure on the majority of third level students. What most of us did not expect is that it would turn violent and riot police would be deployed. This is the turning point to which I am referring. In reality, what took place was a microcosm of Irish society contained within small group of students/activists who decided that they needed to make a statement of some kind in the hope that someone, somewhere in the Dáil will pay attention. Whether or not their motives were pure is irrelevant to the point i’m trying to make. |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2Yeah..there is a palpable feeling in the air. A tension in the psychic commonality if you will. Last wednesday's protests seem to have given the cowering irish people the insight they needed to see that this government will even stoop to brutally assaulting and abusing people's kids by proxy if that is what it takes to get what they want from us for themselves and their shady financial masters before they leave office.
This raw protest and the paint throwing has shown people that we CAN protest in a way that has an effect that politely holding up signs and marching can never have. We need to SCARE these complacent bastards. they need to see us outside their homes, outside their meetings, outside the dail. getting MAD AS HELL and NOT WILLING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.
I hope you're right.
I'll believe it when the students march in support of of their contemporaries excluded from the academic sanctuary. Or when the trade union membership demand the dis-employed get access to a share of the work and the reward trough so that all have enough before before any get overtime.
I wonder if they managed to elicit a climbdown on fees and surcharges would they maintain their new-found radical chic buzz.
Dont get me wrong. Its good to see a stirring in the long somnolent student body, but I suspect there may be more education required than is customary on the curriculum. Our best hope is that the government keep alienating this sector of the population until more general solidarity emerges.
If so, they will educate themselves.
We are talking about the tiger cubs generation.Techno-savvy, globally linked, free access to radical music(as well as all the pap muzak), but also raised to know its all about memememe getting mineminemine through the orthodoxy of neo-liberal conformity.
Early days.