Pit Stop Ploughshares re-trial Day 1

national | anti-war / imperialism | news report Wednesday July 05, 2006 13:12 by Madam K

On a bright Sunny morning over 30 people gathered in O'Connell Street to join the solidarity procession to the Four Courts in support of the the Five Pitstop Ploughshare defendants. A Solemn single file set of led by the defendents. At the Four Courts Carmen Trotter from NYC Catholic Workers and Ciaron O'Reilly addressed the crowd prior to entering Court 24 for the Jury selection. People were encouraged to maintain a vigil outside the courts to draw attention to the injustice of the Iraq war and Irish complicity in this. As I left most of the people were still there highlighting the Court case and people are encouraged to join as and when they are free to. The Morning Vigil will be a daily occurence gathering 8.30 a.m onwards at the Spire, O'Connell Street.

Ciaron O'Reilly adressed the crowd stating 'This is our Third Ploughsharers Trial, the (justice) system here is designed to isolate you, demoralise you ,defeat you and utlamately get you to recant from any resistance to it, and, the only anti venom we have is the sense of community and solidarity and one of the things that touches me today is the pluralism of our movement of budhist and catholic, agnostic and atheist, pagan, socialists and anarchist and people with all different hairstyles , all different musical tastes...and they want us to be very uniform, they want us to be consumers they do not want us to be active citizens we feel that we have acted of conscious. Now it is up to the conscious of the community; the jury. One of our last jury members is here today having been touched by our testimony to see how their act of conscience resonates with theirs (the jury) what is running in aberrance. between these two consciousness is a legal system that trys to take all act out of consciousness...'

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