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If you look at the photographs and videos from the protest at North Frederick Street where housing activists occupied and vacated an empty building, the obvious question is : whose side were the gardaí on?
Perhaps this is an unfair question, but it’s one plenty of people following the events online and on the streets will ask. After protestors marched to Store Street garda station, they stood outside chanting “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”
Unidentified men men wearing balaclavas emerged from a van to enter and then seal the property on Tuesday. The photographs show them standing at a door with gardaí in the foreground. The garda were also wearing balaclavas. Garda sources say they are part of the Public Order Units protective uniforms and have have also said that the Garda involved would have been concerned about reprisals on foot of being identified on social media.
This may well be the case but if anyone was seeking images or an incident to stoke the embers of an incendiary mood in Dublin, they need look no further. For the gardaí to enter the fray in this manner, masked and brandishing batons, was brutish and foolish. The housing crisis is emotionally charged, and on North Frederick Street, the gardaí merely escalated the situation. Protestors were arrested, some ended up in hospital. What’s going on?
https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.irishti ... mode%3DampInevitably Una seeks to hop on the bandwagon....surprisingly I happen to agree with some of what she says...
Unsurprisingly, a number of the activists involved in the occupation the other evening are veterans of the abortion referendum campaign where they proudly documented online their dismantling of pro life posters around Dublin. I was derided by a number of contributors to this site at that time for suggesting that many of the classically liberal minded supporters of that campaign would do well to take note of the broader objectives of a subsection of prominent repealers who viewed it as a means to advance an entryist hard left agenda of rather than simply a question of access to abortion services.
It's worth pointing out that 10 years ago, a referendum on the extinguishing of the rights of the unborn would have stood zero chance of passing in Ireland. If the likes of Una and her cohort are fully on board with this, and it comes to be appropriated as the next hot ticket after abortion by the trendy brigade, who's to say property rights couldn't go the same way ? Seems fantastical now but so did Brexit and trump....
