Gluaiseacht Newsletter

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday January 03, 2003 16:46 by Gluaiseacht - Gluaiseacht newsletter at gluaiseacht dot org

Shannon, Corrib Gas, The Third Grassroots Gathering, The Glu Meeting in Sligo.

Below is the latest Glu newsletter, to get either a pdf or hard copy to make copies to distribute or to contribute your literary masterpieces to the next issue contact: [email protected]

Gas Exploitation in Erris

After planning permission was granted to Enterprise Energy Ireland, now subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, by Mayo Co. Council for the proposed gas terminal at Bellanaboy Bridge, An Bord Pleanala requested further information following a two–week long hearing last February.

The second hearing started on Monday 25th of November and hadn’t finished by the time of writing.
The planning board raised concerns about health and safety, due to the terminal site’s proximity to residential areas, as the pipeline will run through four villages, within metres of houses, and through a special area of conservation before it reaches the proposed terminal– in contravention of two EU habitats directives.

The pipeline will also contain any discharges for the terminal, possibly mercury and cadmium as well as the electrical steering mechanism for the well– head, with a clear risk of an electrical explosion and blow out.
For the construction of the terminal, 600,000 cubic metres of peat are to be removed and dumped in a repository area on the site.

The removal of the peat would additionally to the risk of a peat– slide result in absorption capacities being grossly reduced.
The consequent run–off might flood
neighbouring low–lying areas.
Beyond a few hundred short time jobs the
area gets nothing out of the deal,
not even the gas, because it is not
commercially viable for Bord Gais to supply Erris.

– Claudia

Shannon Deathport

Shannon airport has been kept under surveillance for over a year now, and it has been recorded and documented that:
American military planes are re–fuelling, civilian planes hired by the American military are re–fuelling, and tanker planes, which re–fuel combat aircraft in mid–air, are based in Shannon from time to time.

There has been a noticeable increase in recent months.
During the war in Afghanistan the Irish government claimed that troops seen during a protest there were on their way to Germany, yeah, in desert camouflage!!!

They tried to keep things pretty quiet, but on St. Patrick’s Day Dubya let the cat out of the bag with fulsome praise for Bertie’s gift of airspace and airports.

Still it didn’t get much media attention, until a spray can was taken to a transport plane in September.

On October the 12th hundreds of people turned up to demonstrate at the airfield, and when a fence was surgically struck and decommissioned by a small mob, one woman darted across the runway grounds pursued by Keystone Cops.

First a pregnant pause and then she was
followed by well over a hundred anti–warriors, who soon faced threatened use of water cannon, dogs and arrest.

Ten people were arrested, but released after the people occupying the runway grounds refused to move until the arrestees went free, after the airport road was briefly blocked, and after we all went down to the cop shop to make sure they would get out.

A diverse ragtag throng of around 400 demonstrators gathered in Shannon on December the 8th, accompanied by 200 Garda (on two shifts), the Garda canine unit, undercover police, Special Branch, the State’s only police helicopter, plus Aer Rianta’s own security.

Well we must be doing something right.

We set off on an arduous trek into the airport, complete with music from a shopping trolley sound system and a fiddle player.

Strangely absent were mass produced placards all bearing the same slogan, so people had to make do with D–I–Y banners, homemade T–Shirts, one coffin with ‘Irish Neutrality’ written on it, various Uncle Sam/Dubya impersonators, and a bunch of kids chucking flour about the place.

A team of graphic design artists went to work on the truly crass, kitsch and hideous giant yellow 1970ies tail fin monument just up from the terminal building.
A piece of public “art” that seems to plead ‘paint me!’, ‘paint me!’, in a whimpering despair filled voice every time you pass it.

With some paint it was transformed into a memorial to the recently deceased anti–war activist Philip Berrigan and to the innumerable Iraqi children slain by U.N. sanctions and the U.S. war machine.

According to media reports military flights to Shannon that day were diverted to Prestwick in Scotland.

A peace house has been established in Shannon, as a permanent base for documenting the use of the airport for military purposes, and as a step towards setting up a peace camp.

Help is needed with this project, donations of both money and bodies would be appreciated.

Contact [email protected] for more information as to how you can help with this.

There is another demonstration at Shannon airport on Saturday, January 18th.

- Harry Pollitt

Grassroots Gathering 3

The highly successful 3rd Grassroots Gathering brought together over one hundred environmentalists, anarchists, and other assorted troublemakers from across the island and beyond. There were almost 20 different workshops on a wide variety of topics including Gender, Direct Action, Social Centres, Reclaim the Streets, Sectarianism, and Forest Gardens.

It took place in Giros, which has been a democratically managed social centre in Belfast, with gigs, meetings, a cafe, a darkroom, a library, and in all probability much more, since back when The Cure were fashionable.
The highpoint of the workshops was for me, and many others, the "Arrest and Interrogation" one. This was introduced by
a member of the Cork Anarchist Alliance, and was pretty much free of waffle, with a down to earth sharing of experiences, mistakes and lessons learned. Apart from no comment, no comment and no comment, important points included the need to talk to arrested persons afterward, as there maybe some trauma, and the importance of not bring information providing things such as ID, notebooks, or switched on mobiles to situations where you may be arrested. Police intelligence gathering and harassment were also talked about.

Given the international situation, unsurprisingly talk about the war took up a lot of time. One excellent workshop was introduced by the Shannon plane spotters of Refuelling Peace. The discussion following this was mostly about schemes to establish a peace camp at Shannon, creating a
democratic anti–war network and a call for a further demonstration at Shannon warport. These proposals were then taken to the Morning meeting, i.e. to all folk at Grassroots, not just attendees at one workshop (or at least everyone who had got out of bed).

Glu Meeting Sligo

The unwitting inhabitants of Sligo played host over the weekend of 23/24 November to a Gluaiseacht contingent intent on widening the meeting circuit to yet another virgin territory. The meeting kicked off on Saturday morning on the Sligo I.T. campus, and proceedings soon took on an upbeat, productive air, that elusive holy grail of Glu meetings. Unfortunately it also took on the air of a meeting on the run, as attendees were hounded from classroom to lecture theatre by preppy types who had ‘definitely booked the room before us’ (they probably had) and who ‘wanted to know who was in charge’. Meanwhile the mysterious agenda, apparently conjured out of thin air, was moved briskly through, confirming fledgling plans for an ‘Ulstertopia’ of some description to hopefully take place somewhere in the north next summer. A suggested moniker of ‘the Green Hand of Ulster’ was met with great ambivalence. The highly positive feedback from October’s Grassroots Gathering was palpable, and it was hoped that a post mortem held by its organisers would ensure that the expertise gained in Belfast would be disseminated to future organisers, not least of whom those planning for the Grassroots to take place in Limerick over St. Paddy’s weekend. In the evening session, the future directions of the newsletter and the website were discussed, conclusions being that a concerted effort would be made to see the website realise some of its potential, as a comprehensive database of all that is Gluaiseacht and its campaigns, and to reflect the vitality of the group itself. It was similarly hoped that the scope of the newsletter be much expanded, and it was pointed out that the strength of the newsletter, much like the website, will depend upon the contributions of Gluaiseacht members for the quantity and quality of its output. A brainstorming session was conducted with the aim of identifying the most sought after subjects on which Gluaiseacht members would like to see workshops conducted. An extensive list was compiled, to which was tacked on a list of possible facilitators, the vital link in any
hypothetical workshop. Would–be topics ranged from the most basic and necessary, such as in consensus, meeting facilitation and various aspects of campaign skills, to more long–sighted facets of the theory and practice of Gluaiseacht members’ aspirations. With the other topics touched on being penciled in for next–day discussion and resolution, the session was wrapped up and the evening’s entertainment begun for some by means of therapeutical one–on–one meetings with a Tibetan healer. The holy man had not, in fact, been hired by Gluaiseacht for the collective spiritual health of the meeting, but rather just happened to be resident in one of the pubs in town for the night. After dinner, the party moved on to the General Trades Club, where the Glu crowd were treated to a gutsy performance by Darren and Tina, like most of the Belfast crew currently touring the country. The meeting’s fortunes took a belly dive on Sunday, when those who were still, in Shakespearean language, ‘quick’, from the somewhat bizarre night before, met with the cruel surprise that Gluaiseacht was venueless for day two of the meeting, arrangements to convene at the Trades Club having evidently run aground. And another chance to fraternize with the workers squandered. The next hours were largely spent wandering aimlessly around Sligo town, but were not a complete waste; indeed they led to the sole direct action of the weekend, Tim and Steve’s daring modification of some lewd local graffiti, pertaining to the virtuousness of a certain Sligo girl/woman. By 3 o’clock, however, a venue had been found, and an extremely condensed meeting session was allowed to take place. Gluaiseacht’s plans to attain charitable staus were discussed, and consensus was reached that these plans would be put into action as soon as possible. The Sellafield and Shannon campaigns were discussed, and there were commitments that Gluaiseacht members would take an active role in the immediate future in both, including the action at Shannon on Sunday 8th December, and with regard to Sellafield pending further study by a Gluaiseacht working group. An open tender for the hosting of the next meeting fell to Kilkenny Glu members in an unprecedented move breaking away from the traditional coastal orbit of the Gluaiseacht meeting circuit (apart from Athlone). This was in spite of a doomed suggestion that the group might adopt a more permanent central meeting point somewhere on the island, rather than keeping to the precarious nature of the current circuit. So that was Sligo and it was all great, but seriously, if I see another big, fat jar of Nescafe laid on at another Gluaiseacht meeting, you can forget non–violence cause I’m gonna hit somebody. with it!

– Alois Vincenzo