Showing posts with label refugee crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refugee crisis. Show all posts
The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forumhas released the following statement concerning protests at asylum seeker accommodation.

Protesting against asylum seekers and their places of accommodation is wrong.

Asylum seekers and refugees are not responsible for creating and maintaining the grossly unfair, iniquitous system existing in Ireland today.

So no-one should allow others to use their justifiable anger at the state of our country; the collapsing public health services, money grabbing landlordism, no available public housing, poor wages, no job security.

Migrants and asylum seekers have not caused this mess or made peoples’ lives harder or deprived children of anything.

We need to channel our anger at those responsible. The blame lies with the Irish elites, the landlords both corporate and local, the employers who pay slave wages and those who govern over this state of affairs.

If people focus their anger on migrants and asylum seekers then they are letting the powers that be of the hook.

People are right to be angry but must make sure to hit the right target i.e. the 1% who run and control our lives. Kick up not down.

The solution is to change the system that’s at fault, not to blame those who are not.

Tommy McKearney … Joint-Chair Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum

Target The 1%, Not Immigrants And Refugees

In the Irish Times Former Irish President Mary McAleese urges Ireland to show kindness to strangers and speaks of ‘cowardly’ bishops.

By Patsy McGarry

Former president Mary McAleese has said it bothers her greatly to see people who are strangers to Ireland treated in ways that are contrary “to the ethic of our country and our people”.

Without specific reference to protests against accommodating asylum seekers in Achill, Ballinamore, and Oughterard, she spoke on Saturday of people who had to leave their homes and:

suddenly they have nowhere, and nothing. And now they rely on the kindness of strangers …  My God tells me I have to be the stranger who is kind. That simple . . . it bothers me greatly finding that [in] a country that I’m so proud of, that sometimes people are not experiencing the kindness that I know is the ethic of our country and our people.
She pointed out: “We relied on it [kindness] ourselves so often when we went as emigrants to other countries, poor, our two hands the one length, looking for opportunity.”

Continue reading @ the Irish Times.

Strangers & Cowardly Bishops