Ireland 2002

Click on photos to see a larger version

Shannon, Ireland: 
INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING!
GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE AGAINST OIL WARS AND ALL WARS

Women at Galway university report that they: “Won free childcare for mothers who want to go on an archaeology field trip as a result of our exhibition of our demands on wall of Student Union building.  Great as we’ve been fighting for this in the Archaeology Dept. and trade union all year, so it sets a precedent... Everyone we spoke to is incensed by the university trying to approve the military degree and is encouraging us to mount a full scale campaign on that, which environmental activists and anarchists offered to help with.  We won the referendum on abortion by less than one per cent.  When helping to take down the puppets from the railings of the church, three older men came up to me and said ‘congratulations, the day of the vote was a great day for women’.  So the government is in trouble!  Fianna Fail Ard Fheis (general conference) last night, Bertie Ahern promised (!) full pensions for homemakers at the non-contributory rate - whose afraid of mna na heireann (women of Ireland) now?!!  We will write to all parties asking re their position on this.”

Outdoor Vigil in centre of Galway: 8th March was a day of storms of wind coming in from the Atlantic, rain, sleet -- building up at nightfall to a snowstorm!  This did not defeat us, even though we had organized a 10-hour open air event in Galway's market area outside St Nicholas' Protestant church, thanks to the men's support group who supplied hot food throughout the day.  Exhibition of posters, flags, photos & giant puppets on the churchyard railings.  There was great generosity toward us throughout the town: two pubs gave us unlimited free tea and coffee, free bread from a nearby bakery and vouchers from friendly cafes. 

In between the storms and rain they held speakouts, “and a lot of great music; the Dance of the Brushes, sweeping the main shopping street (pedestrianised) clean of corporate greed. Then we made lightning sorties into the Dole Office, where speeches were made and the waiting claimants joined in our chants, "All women strike for a change!", etc.; the Allied Irish Bank (its American subsidiary in Baltimore is being investigated over a suspected multi-million dollar fraud), where we recited a rude ditty about its goings-on; McDonalds; River Island, a shop which sells sweatshop-made trendy clothing; the copshop to demand an end to police-enforced deportations and official racism, and to ask what has happened to our indictment of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern for aiding/abetting war crimes against women in Afghanistan by giving up our airports to George W. Bush's war. We lodged the indictment with the police shortly before Christmas last year.  

Finally, the great patriarchal symbol, the Catholic cathedral, which was empty but we swept it and had a great time shouting & letting our hair down -- altogether great fun -- we felt strongly about this place because the R.C. Church had gone along with the abortion referendum on Wednesday March 6th, supporting the insertions in the Constitution of (1) 12 years imprisonment for women procuring abortions in Ireland and  (2) the specific outlawing of threatened suicide as a reason to give a women an abortion.