#OccupyEyreSquare: Public Awareness Day, today 1pm
Come along to hear some key speakers on issues relating to the economic MESS we are all facing! This will be a day of solidarity with Occupy protests taking place in over 1600 cities worldwide. Come and show your support and have YOUR voice heard. Live music, refreshments and fun to be had as well!
Occupy Galway is part of the international movement against austerity measures imposed on ordinary people around the world. We are all part of the 99% who, so far, have been subject to economic inequality and social injustice from the 1% who control the world's resources. We, the 99% demand:
1 - The removal of the IMF and ECB from all Irish financial affairs;
2 - That the national debt imposed on Irish people from the bank bailouts be lifted;
3 - The return of Irish resources (gas, oil, forestry) to the people of Ireland;
4 - Real particpatory democracy.
THIS IS NOT A RECESSION, IT'S A ROBBERY!!!
See you there!
#OccupyGalway - Call out for HELP:
If
there's ANYONE around Galway city today that is able to bring tarp, a
gazebo, sandbags, sleeping bags etc. please do so. They are needed
urgently to battle the torrential conditions.At the moment we need a metal
barrel, a generator, an internet usb, a large canvas (for a roof),
gaffa tape and hot food is always appreciated!
- Occupy Eyre Square: Public Awareness Day
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=262900923747922
Saturday 22 October · 13:00 - 16:00 (today)
The group has no hierarchical structure, has set up a Facebook page and Twitter account – with the social media links attracting a very mixed, and sometimes critical, reaction.
“In general, the reaction of passers-by has been great, and we only wish the people talking on Facebook would come down and join us,” chef Gillen Hardesty from Renmore and Sean Maguire, from the Galway-Mayo border, said.
“People have offered us food, we’ve been offered the use of toilets, the gardaí kept the drinkers away last night, and the public have been very positive,” they said.
“There is a huge anger and frustration out there and people don’t know what to do because they feel that the International Monetary Fund, rather than the government, is running the country,” they said.
Instead of pretending to be a policy think tank, the Occupy movement is transparently a campaign of civil disobedience, and it has had immediate success. It has already altered the parameters of the debate, with talk of balanced budgets and deficit reduction – pernicious euphemisms for small government – rapidly being supplanted by talk of inequality. And by reframing the debate the Occupy movement has already perceptibly shifted the ground on which next year’s US presidential election will be run, forcing Democrats to the left. It has achieved all this in a month.
Ultimately, issuing demands is another way of saying you can be bought off. But you can’t buy a fairer society, you can’t buy a more equitable distribution of wealth and you can’t buy governance free from corporate corruption.
For those goals to be achieved, every actor in a society has to consistently work at them – it’s a process, not a transaction.
Perhaps the Occupy protests’ main achievement, then, won’t be any piece of legislation or banking reform but the legitimisation of protest itself. If they succeed in that, maybe 10 years on Dame Street won’t sound so absurd after all.
#OccupyGalway: Tent city grows in Eyre Square
#OccupyGalway: This is what democracy looks like
#OccupyGalway: Is it for this that the sons of Roisín died???