Galway Marches Against War
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miscellaneous |
news report 
Saturday February 22, 2003 18:39
by Vinnie
Today, Saturday 22 February, a large number of people came out in Galway to protest at the upcoming war for oil. A march was held from Fr Griffin Park to Eyre Square where many speakers, poets and singers addressed the crowd.
Notable amongst the statements was the song addressed to Mary Harney that went "We're not anti-american, we're anti-war, and if you don't understand that, you must be a simpleton".
Also anger was displayed at the recent comments by some politicians that marchers were somehow misguided and being overly sentimental, and it was stated that if anyone has the weight of rationality and logic on their side it is the anti-war movement not the warmongers.
Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6The organisers reckon about 3000 joined the march —overwhelmingly young people. This was very good for a low-key local demonstration, called as recently as Monday. Padraic Stevens sang (and wrote) the song mentioned above. There were also powerful musical contibutions from Leo Moran, Eoghan Burke, Rob Stafford and Blue Germaine. Poems were contributed by Rita Ann Higgins, Michael D. Higgins, Kevin Higgins, Louis de Paor and Pearse Doherty.
The powers-that-be are worried. Shown by Harney's vituperation. Ahern is sitting on the fence so long he clearly has no balls left. They fear real politics, mass protest, participatory democracy, and direct action. Let's end the politics of evasion and lies. Let's give them what they fear!
From the Indymedia article you'd think that the people of Galway appeared in Eyre Square by osmosis! The Galway march didn't just happen. It was organised. Galway Alliance Against War organised it, and that means that a tiny number of activists worked hard to make sure it happened in a very short time scale. The establishment has an organised system and if we are going to confont them we have to organise as well.
I urge anybody from Galway, particularly anybody that marched to join GAAW and help with the work. It's much easier to organise if you can spread the load among many hands.
We meet at Richardsons pub in Eyre Square every Tuesday at 8.30pm. Or cobtact us at gaaw@eircom.net or check the web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~gaaw.
rgds
Phelim
GAAW
My placard in Dublin read, Not Anti American - Just Anti War.
I detest the way in which messrs Harney & McDowall are insinuating that to protest for a peaceful solution to this contrived crisis, you have to be mad or bad. I think that the population generally are begining to realise that being passive, as they have for the past five/six years, is not now an option and that by gathering together to protest against this cruel war, they can make a difference!
Keep up the good work.
This was an amazingly well attended march considering the small amount of publicity it got.
On the subject of Mary Harney and her party, they keep suggesting that they disagree with the appeasement of Saddam Hussein. They clearly have a different understanding of the word to the rest of us. Dreadful and all as Saddam is, in this case he is clearly not the aggressor. George Bush is.
It was the appeasement of an agressor that eventually led to the 2nd world war. If the present situation gets out of hand and destabilises the middle east, history will be very unkind to the likes of Mary Harney just as it was to Neville Chamberlain before her.
The reason Saddam Hussein and so many other
dictators and military regimes are a menace
is because they have been armed, mainly by the U.S.
and Europe. So it's long overdue that these
countries stopped creating and facilitating deadly
dictatorships. The Arms industry is a
multi- billion dollar industry worldwide. Most
Arms producers don't care who they sell to, as
long as they sell. If the potential customer is
too embarassing to deal with directly, it's never
difficult to find go-betweens. Many British Arms
exporters have received "the Queen's Award for
Industry" for their efforts. How many countries
are there in the world where there are plenty of
arms but ordinary people can hardly survive -
Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, Iraq, Angola, etc,
etc?? Many countries also use the sale of their
last generation arms to finance their current and
next generation of arms. This is regarded as
"ecomonically sound". How much did it cost the
U.S. and everyone else in 1990 to try to regain control of the Arms they sold to Saddam previously?
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