new campaign & website launched

national | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Monday March 13, 2006 04:32

by shane ocurry - wsm - personal capacity

wear a Black Shamrock!

There is an exciting if rather belated anti-war initiative, being prepared here in Ireland, for Saint Patrick's Day. It was thought up by a member of the Derry Anti War Coalition, and has been put into action by an ad hoc group here in Derry but the idea is really striking a chord with everyone who hears about it.

There is an exciting if rather belated anti-war initiative, being prepared here in Ireland, for Saint Patrick's Day. It was thought up by a member of the Derry Anti War Coalition, and has been put into action by an ad hoc group here in Derry but the idea is really striking a chord with everyone who hears about it.

The idea is really simple:

We are calling on everyone who is against Ireland being used as a stopping off point for planes going to war (or doing anything else to support Bush's war effort) to wear a black shamrock.

In the lead up to St Patrick's Day -it is an opportune way in which we can express our opposition to both the facilitation of US airplanes at Irish airports and to the presence of arms manufacturers in our economy, e.g. Raytheon in Derry. The black shamrock represents our mourning for the loss of Irish Neutrality and the losses of the tens of thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the US-led wars in which our leaders, north and south, have been complicit.

We are having the badges printed as fast as we can ship them. On the website there are images for badges and posters which can be downloaded and creatively used.

The website will be "officially" launched early this week with information and a facility for uploading and publishing photographs of the black shamrock image being worn by people or being displayed in a particular place - hoping for world wide coverage.

You can see the website here: http://www.blackshamrock.org (it is using the software that was created for IndyMedia Ireland). It is nearly finished, but not quite ready to be opened to the public yet. Suggestions for improvements welcome - up to the limits of the software!

We are asking people to have a photograph taken of themselves wearing the badge and have it uploaded to the site - connecting to the Irish diaspora and "a day for everyone to be Irish" , especially to tie in with the world - wide protest against the Iraq War on 18th March.

Publicise the Protest
If you can give the website some publicity on your site or in your newsletter that would be even better! It will have provision for groups to become distributors for the badges and images.

A very special thanks to the indymedia folks for helping getting this site up and running!

if you want to help in any way, distributing badges, tshirts, or becoming a site moderator please contact:

shaner at riseup dot net

or

click the 'contact us' button on the blackshamrock.org website

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Comments (16 of 16)

some more pics

by shane ocurry

Mon Mar 13, 2006 05:08

there is to be a county-by-county competition on the site for the best black shamrock sightings and sitings

battle of the bog boy

bowled over

shamrocks around dublin

by Dublinarchist

Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:47

going down well

by Dave - swp

Mon Mar 13, 2006 13:00

Spent some time on an anti-war stall on grafton street on saturday where we had the badges. they turned out to be really popular and evryone I spoke to about them thought they were a a great idea. Even at work this morning been asked by about ten people what the black shamrock stands for.

great idea.

by :-)

Mon Mar 13, 2006 13:12

reminder to all to wear an afghani purple "opium poppy for peace" this november as well !!!!
and to pressure Google for a lily on the 1916 commemoration day.

saint patrick says "wear a black shamrock"

presenting GWB..

by bertie

Mon Mar 13, 2006 13:40

We've Got Cowen in Briz Vegas,LINK- OZ born RAF Dr. Court Martialled Over the War!

by Usual Suspect - Cowen in Brsibane, Australia for St. Patrick's Day!

Tue Mar 14, 2006 03:00

Brisbane, Australia

http://theage.com.au/news/world/doctor-faces-court-mart....html

Black Shamrocks

by Caitriona

Wed Mar 15, 2006 13:28

Black Shamrocks blooming in Dublin's Northside (pics to follow)
Black Shamrocks are poking their dirty heads through concrete and steel in Dublin's North Inner City. They have been sighted in Phibsboro, Drumcondra, Dorset St., Stoneybatter, Parnell St. They are a symbol of mourning for all of those who have died since the beginning of the war in Iraq, and a potent reminder of Ireland's complicity in the war,as Shannon and Baldonnel continue to be used by U.S. military.

Got mine.

by c murray - at home

Wed Mar 15, 2006 20:57

dotliath at gmail dot com

n/a

0877765289

will wear it with pride.

if you're having difficulty with the black shamrock thing

by bosco - (the local blue peter type)

Wed Mar 15, 2006 23:03

here's some suggestions.

(1) Take a piece of cardboard, cut it (carefully) [ask a grown up to help you] into a shamrock shape & colour it with a black marker.
(2) Take an ordinary shamrock and dip it in crude oil.
(3) take a pack of playing cards and cut out the ace of clubs.

oh yes don't forget that Paddy's day is the Spanish "macro-bottelon" day.

by belch - we reclaim things

Thu Mar 16, 2006 00:03

bottelon is the word for the millenial practise of drinking in the street and on the square, playing music, chatting up the attractive, growing up, and generally being "in your community". bottelon got the spaniard, basque and catalan and galician through dictatorships and republics, through poverty and prosperity and like a decent evolutionary curve guaranteed them new young people.
But then came the modern world of the XXI century and "anti-social" laws. On the 17th of March , kids and their wise elders will assemble to exercise their .:. right .:. to their street and squares, to socialise, to drink in, to smoke in, to dance in, to busk in. They will most probably many of them bring their own "dhrink" and others will buy some from street vendors, who are generally very poor unregularised migrants. If you can hop on a ryanair, check out these cities at this time. The "macro bottelon" is a competition, to see which city may bring out the most revellers. So far galicia which had its outing last weekend is scoring high on 5,000 confirmed young people who exercised a tradition first criminalised by Aznar and then topped off by the "socialist regime" in Vigo.
Barcelona rambla de la del Raval, (off of ramblas) @ 23h00
Madrid: the square at the Moncloa Palace where Zapatero lives from 21h30 onwards
Ibiza: Queen Sofia park.
Burgos: The cathedral

there are a few others as well, but off the ryanair beaten path.
Bilbao in the basque will celebrate their reclaim the piss-up on Friday 31st of March. Coz the basques are different.

last link for spanish readers to horizontal media coverage.
with list of other cities participating.

congregators of the world unite!

by Louise Michel - 99 of Black Shamrock Collective

Thu Mar 16, 2006 02:59

and wear a Black Shamrock

yippee! "making politics from the street" & having a buzz

by iosaf

Thu Mar 16, 2006 19:03

I am glad to report there will be an @rt action with black shamrocks 2mrw in BCN. I'll send ye images when ready. Its very interesting. As we all know, Ireland has a long bank holiday weekend ahead. And thanks to "visigoth airlines" Ryanair plc, the bench mark of the celtic tiger and one of the most disreputable international companies as regards truthful advertising, disability rights, and worker relations (c/f http://indymedia.ie/article/69876 http://indymedia.ie/article/70217 http://indymedia.ie/article/68749 &c.., )
cities like my own (Barcelona) will be awash with Irish people who have a lot more money than the locals. They'll clock themselves into the rash of "irish bars" and start drinking for ten a.s.a.p. & because their €uros are welcomed by the regime and city adminstration, the city police will not say boo! to them. But as we plan our "macro-reclaim the piss up" the messages being exchanged on both sides of "public order / disorder" are clear, tomorrow night my barrio the old city of Barcelona is going to be awash with the mayor Juan Clos's guardia urbana out to stop the party. I've a sneaking suspicion that more people will go to the street in the Spanish state to revindicate the right to knacker drinking instead of paying 5 times the odds in some trendy bar with terrace than have been calculated by the tippy toppy mathematicians to have demonstrated for any political cause, what-so-ever in the last 2 years.

hope everyone is getting their black shamrock pins, labels, posters and stencils together!

beir bua gach duine ansiúd, is shona lá naomh padraigh agaibhsa!

Black Shamrocks available in Dublin today

by anarchaeologist - GrassrootsDissent

Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:29

Black Shamrock badges will be available for today's Paddy's Day parade in Dublin and for tomorrow's anti-war demo.

Get them from Shane (00447968210645) in the city centre or Franc (086 8537281) in the Liberties.

Dublin: Black Shamrocks available now Central bank Plaza

by Shane

Fri Mar 17, 2006 14:40

phone or txt shane 0044 7968 210 645
.

Shamrocks are our National Symbol

by Gay Geori

Fri Mar 17, 2006 19:50

gaygeori at graffiti dot net

Stop hijacking it and defacing it for your own political purposes. It's bad enough to see it prostitued by merchandising mad gombeenism in Dublin without a crowd from Derry coming down here and doing same...

Let the Irish have their National Day the traditional way...

Shamrocks Are Green

Purity in times of war is impurity

by Micheál

Thu Aug 17, 2006 17:19

Your comments about hijacking the green shamrock are almost beyond me...

The shamrock is our national symbol, The symbol of our nation of Ireland.

Is it that you wish to protect a national symbol from being used to represent the wishes of the nation? Have you perhaps gone so far off the line of the reasonable in your thinking, that you believe that the shamrock image should be kept in a glass case and only used on specific occasions by the divinely chosen? For if that is your thinking, you will take the shamrock and turn it into a defunct symbol, which once represented a nation, lost forever to the ordinary people of Ireland.

This is bringing the argument to another degree, but i think the point is worthwhile.
If you deny the use of the national symbol to be used to represent the people's righteous grievances against countless illegal wars and Ireland's involvement, then you do not save that symbol. Instead you forever stain it with the blood, it is sullied by it's silence.

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Comments (16 of 16)