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dublin |
arts and media |
news report
Tuesday May 03, 2005 15:01
by Noise Hacker
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Comments (22 of 22)
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why on earth was the connolly statue written all over and why was his head covered??? of all the statues to deface???
.
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Reclaim the Streets 2005!
Why are you writing on the Connolly statue? Why did you put a bag over his head?
I think that Connolly made mistakes in his time, but you cannot take away from the fact that he was a genuine workers leader. Connolly was key organiser of Trade Unions in Belfast and Dublin. Connolly was a marxist revolutionary that did a lot for the Labour movement and the working class.
WHY ARE YOU ATTACKING HIS STATUE? Are you hostile to the working class? (btw why were none of you at the May Day march with the GAMA workers?)
1. It was not a bag - it was a mask, put there by people wearing masks.
2. Since there was a queue of people getting there photo taken with the statue at least one explanation is that this was an attempt to reclaim Connolly.
3. I walked behind the GAMA workers on the TU march the day before Mayday. Behind me were a number of people who I also met at the RTS the day after Mayday.
4. While I would be ambivalent to putting the mask on the statue I am not going to defend anybody who tagged it with paint.
though i think it was (nearly) all chalk. Hope no one used paint, but i wouldn't call what happened an attack by any means. see the bit of a discussion on: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69655
I have a lot of sympathy with the RTS agenda - taking back the street from the tyranny of the car, celebrating creativity, injecting a bit of fun into political struggle etc, etc. In fact I would certainly have gone if I could have made the trip to Dublin yesterday. However, I am not convinced that RTS in Ireland has been very successful at articulating its political message. Of course the are serious constraints - the mocking media, the malevolent police, come to mind immediately. It is perfectly valid for people to enjoy themselves and to celebrate that as a political outcome in what is a very alienated society. But when people carry banners with anti-capitalist symbols, then they have a responsibility to clarify their political objectives - that is of course presuming that they want to engage with the broader population.
If RTS participants wanted to reclaim Connolly, why not garland him with flowers as an alternative or dedicate some street theatre to his image. Even some discussion of the limitations of his ideas would be welcome. Engage with his contradictions by all means, but I get the impression that he got graffitid simply because he was there. It could just as easily have been the 'floozie in the Jacuzzi' whatever was handiest or nearest to the crowed That's the saddest aspect of it all.
Of course people can argue that graffiti is itself an act of resistance - but are all such acts equally valid? Why target one of the few symbols of left wing politics that has recognition and credibility in Ireland. Was it just a spur of the moment thing? People just caught on the wave of excitement? All that is forgivable enough if those responsible get down to the monument and clean it up.
But please don't try to dress it up as something that it is not. Sometimes graffiti is only graffiti.
I am disgusted at the graffiti on the Connolly memorial, that goes without saying, but im just as disgusted with the masking of connolly. The last time Connolly was masked was when he was sitting in a chair waiting to be executed by the British. The movement that Connolly represented was one of the working class against capitalism - that meant he stood for mass action - not sporadic, often bewildering, antics by people who hide their face run around in thier little black get up.
I have read nothing here to justify any defacing of the Connolly memorial - i'm glad i wasn't there this year i would have found it extremely difficult to restrain myself.
A bit of imagination would have directed the offenders to the Daniel O'Connell statue - the so called liberartor was one of the more virulent enemies of the Irish working class in his day - it would have taken five minutes to turn their 'revolutionary' spray cans in his direction - not that that would have achieved anything.
I'm 'semi-genuinely' trying to not go down the road of slagging of the whole march as middle class malcontents who are on the tear before they settle down to thier chosen repsectable career, especially as I wasn't there - but I don't fully get what it achieves - I don't think the state and the capitalists quiver when they see an RTSer with a spray can - what tangiable (4give spelling) if anything comes out of these protests? Don't get me wrong I think they are fair enough - but what is achieved?
Amusing to see the use of stalins airbrush on Connolly. Connolly was indeed about mass politics but he was also about the militant minority acting as a spark - or have you forgotten about 1916 and his involvement with the IWW.
Connolly organised the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers army in Europe - if not further afield.
He obviously took part in the 1916 rising - in my opinion out of desperation - what he didn't do tho was run around like a gobshite rebelling against clothes that are anything other than black nor did he then proceed to vandalise one of a handful of statues or memorials to the movement and struggles of the working class in this country - so no answer to the questions or points raised in my previous text - thankfully tho no attempt at justifying vandalism of the Connolly memorial.
Having been at the street party i can confirm that no damage was done to the statue, it was quiet simply a mask put on his head, some chalk scrawlings and a very charming sticker of a ghettoblaster! i would guess that it all washed off in the next heavy down pour.
please dont use this as a point of arguement ,i think is was all in good fun and has landed the statue on all the newpapers!
great day in all well done to all involved.
Masking and defacing the statue of a man that founded trade unions in this country, fought the 1913 lock out and gave his life for the cause of the Working People of Ireland. Hang your head in Shame!
Great to see Connolly being remembered as a fighter rather than as an empty phrase in a bureaucrats mouth. The unions were built by fighters not by priests looking after relics.
years ago less than 25 people, several of them former officers in british crown forces and others attached to diplomatic mission to London and some more just upper crusty types garlanded Churchill, blindfolded Smutts, and "did" the Cenatoph and the cries were for horsewhipping, bloody murder, torture and the combined prison sentances were over 18 years and the fines over 40,000stg.
YIZ ARE SOFT!
i'm surprised nobody has suggested old James is turning in his grave. Coz he was buried a tortured, shot up crippled mess in quicklime. & don't you forget it.
How DARE you even attempt to steal the image of Connolly for your weak effeminate street party.
James Connolly grew up dire poverty educated himself and became a VIOLENT revolutionary. He and his followers took ARMS and FOUGHT to bring down the British Empire's dominion in Ireland.
Tragically he did not succeed and British imperialists still rule the puppet states of the Six counties and the Twenty Six counties.
Instead of making PEACE we should be shooting the likes of Smurfit, Desmond, O'Leary and all the rest of the fat cats into their graves!
REVOLUTION!
Now I'm off to Burger King for a XL Double Bacon Cheese burger. Yum Yum!
I might buy a Nike shirt, Diesel jeans and Reebok runners while I'm at it!
"Instead of making PEACE we should be shooting the likes of Smurfit, Desmond, O'Leary and all the rest of the fat cats into their graves!"
well, jesus, fire ahead... give me some notice and i'll bring a video camera, i'll even post the footage here if ya want
hail connolly full of grace the lord is with you blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb....
Socialist:
why were none of you at the May Day march with the GAMA workers?
Me:
I was there, as were a significant number of anarchists. In fact anarchists and other libertarian socialists went so far as to organise a unionising drive to follow on from the march. See http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69665
Socialist:
your weak effeminate street party.
Me:
Connolly was also a feminist and didn't equate weak with femininity.
Socialist:
what he didn't do tho was run around like a gobshite rebelling against clothes that are anything other than black
Me:
Connolly appreicated the importance of rebellion whatever it's form.
He wrote...'the development of the fighting spirit is of more importance than the creation of the theoretically perfect organisation; that, indeed, the most theoretically perfect organisation may, because of its very perfection and vastness, be of the greatest possible danger to the revolutionary movement if it tends, or is used, to repress and curb the fighting spirit of comradeship in the rank and file.'
You might say well that's political, clothes and cultural identity aren't. But hang on, Connolly, appreciated that cultural movements, such as the irish language movement, show 'defiant self reliance and confident trust in a people's own power of self-emancipation'.
Socialist:
Are you hostile to the working class?:
Me:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Snoozer writes:
Even some discussion of the limitations of his ideas would be welcome.
Me:
I wrote an article for the last red and black revolution it's at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm/rbr/rbr8/connolly.html
So Sorry trots and trotettes (not calling snoozer a trot) but it seems the anarchists have once again outflanked you with better knowledge of history, better theory, better practice and most importantly A SENSE OF HUMOUR.
Don't get me wrong I love Connolly but I love revolution more and if a bit of paint gets on a religious icon during anti-clerical agitation, well call me a blasphemer, but I don't care all that much.
Great to see the great James Connolly remembered and respected on mayday weekend. The symbolic act of putting the international mask of revolution on his statue and the temporary writing of "we are everywhere..." is a reminder to all of who he really was a revolutionary comrade and no "soldier of destiny"
Do not be disgusted with this act it was not meant to be disrespectful and you have more resons to be disgusted with yourself as your polictical alertness is dull and rid that type of conditioning from your mind.
EMPATHY
REFUSE
RESIST
APATHY
All of the above articles/headlines are positive, at first glance. But the constant reiteration of the word 'peaceful' suggests there was an expectation of something else. Is it really newsworthy that this event was peaceful? Don't be fooled into thinking this was positive press coverage.
What was the point of the protest? I didn't make it on the day, but it sounds like the event was pretty successful in pedestrianising a few streets for the day. Do the media reports address this? Instead they say how peaceful it was, and that there were no arrests, etc.
The agenda of the protest was sidelined.
Anyway, sorry to interrupt your debate. You can go back to endlessly reiterating the two sides of your argument now.
Good point, Paul, the mass media response was not overtly negative, but when you read between the lines it is. For example in one of the reports they say:
'Gardai had been anxious not to see a replay of the violent scenes of May 6 three years ago after the same group organised a similar party that turned ugly, but were delighted with how the day progressed'
This piece and others is a continuation of the mis-truths and propaganda constantly being put out by the State and the Corporate media, where they are completely trying to re-write history and plant in the mind of the public, thereby shaping public opinion that the MayDay trouble 3 years ago was caused by the party-goers. They are the ones that started the trouble and attacked the crowd. Let's get this clear. Many will recall, both people at the RTS on MayDay and those who saw the videos, that it was the Garda attacking the people, not the other way around. See how they coined the end of the phrase 'delighted with how the day progressed' -the implication they are delighted that the RTS crowd were good today, yet again probably the 3rd time in that one sentence they are implying the trouble in 2002 was NOT by the Garda when it was the Garda and everyone knows it. When you repeat a lie often enough though, marketing & propaganda theory says it will stick and that's exactly what they are doing.
At every chance, they are trying to imply that the opposite was true and use the opportunity every time MayDay and RTS is mentioned to give the impression it was otherwise. Back at the Mayday RTS in 2002, the facade that the State is benign was very dramatically broken. That facade says it is there to serve the people and it is just. The reality that it actually serves the elite, maintains the status quo, and will violently react and suppress if any of this is threatened shone through on that day and also last year. People should ask themselves, why we have people who earn millions pay no taxes, politicians caught taking bribes nothing happens, yet bin-tax protestors went to jail, why we have a 2-tier health system and have had for years, why there is no money for building the badly needed new primary schools and fixing up those in a desparate state of repair, why we have one of the most unequitable states in Europe, why we have a waste system geared to producing more waste , why we have such a dis-illusioned society with an incredibly high suicide rate and so on? And now with the latest stuff on curbing youth violence, their answer is more authoritarian measures that simply don't address the needs and reasons
This is why they are so desperate to keep drumming on about the words violence and Mayday, when it was them who caused it in 2002 and 2004. They must keep the facade in place, because without it, people would begin to see through it and not only demand change, but carry it through themselves without their help and in their eyes threaten the lifestyle which they enjoy but the vast majority don't. And the ironic thing is a just and fair society would actually be good and enjoyable to them too.