Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
Through three events on Saturday, New Year’s Eve in the city centre, Dublin sent a solidarity message to the Palestinian people and also to the solidarity activists on hunger strike in British jails, referencing also those of the Irish Resistance in 1981.
Chronologically first was a protest in the Starbucks café1 in Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre obliging the management to close for hours and a balcony walkway banner drop calling for solidarity with the Elbit accused on hunger strike, referencing also the Irish hunger-strikes of 1981.2
I had not read the poster carefully and arrived at the Starbucks at the north end of Grafton Street, where there were a few other confused people also. By the time I made my way up to the southern end of Grafton Street, the protest there was about to leave and I was about to head elsewhere.
The solidarity crowd continued to demonstrate in the shopping centre’s main doorway before marching away, then went into the Zara3 big shop and demonstrated there awhile before heading on to MacDonald’s in Grafton Street where the Gardaí began to let their nasty side show a little.
Then another Starbucks, this one on Dame Street got a Palestine solidarity visit before the demonstrators went on to the iconic pedestrian Ha’penny Bridge, where the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign holds a Palestine solidarity protest every New Year’s Eve.
There the demonstrators thronged the Ha’penny and Millennium Bridges and spilled out along the quays. I was elsewherefor the first time in years as it was a Wednesday and therefore Jimi Cullen’s weekly protest with songs at the US Embassy in Ballsbridge, this one to be his 97th straight.
As usual there were police on guard there and one in uniform approached myself and Jimi as we were talking and asked Jimi how long the event would be, how many attending etc. Then she suggested I removed my bike which was leaning against a bollard.
I told her I was happy with where it was, thank you. Then she said that it might fall on someone (but not, of course, if across the road!), then that someone might steal it, all of which was nonsense of course then said: ‘I am asking you to remove it’ to which I replied ‘And I am declining.’
She was getting quite angry but decided to walk it off. I have attended supporting Jimi’s protest perhaps a score of times and in the early days had a similar approach from a Special Branch4 officer who accused me of causing ‘a security risk’ to the Embassy’s ‘curtilage’ (on a public footpath)!
Some police just like to throw their weight around even with regard to things that have nothing to do with the law or causing harm to anyone and over which they have no legal power.
Anyway we unfurled the flags, Jimi had a placard displayed, got out his guitar and we sang through week 97 to frequent waves, clapping, thumbs up, clenched fists, shouts and horn blowing of appreciation and solidarity from passing motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.
Jimi began this weekly protest outside the Israeli Embassy but when they left Ireland he moved up the road to the nearby US Embassy, representative of the world leader in terrorism and biggest supporter, politically, financially and militarily of the world’s leading genocider entity.
Usually there are more supporters present. Jimi has a fine stock of protest and solidarity songs, some of which he composed himself and performs them well. Today we did mostly Irish songs of struggle but also one from the black civil rights struggle and Jimi’s own about Palestine.
We had a number of Palestinian flags there but also two Starry Plough flags and there were some Irish Tricolours to be seen on the other protests among the many Palestinian ones. It is from our own struggle that we stand in solidarity with Palestine.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
2Ten Irish Republican prisoners, seven IRA and three INLA died on hunger-strike in a British jail in 1981 in a struggle against criminalisation and for political status
3https://bdsmovement.net/news/boycott-zara-dressing-apartheid-and-genocide
4Political branch of the Irish State police, inherited from Scotland Yard of the British police force.
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