Link to One for the Masters
In general social and political movements need good writers who in gathering their thoughts on what is a dymanic situation in the all important early stages of that movement manage to provide for others the means to focus on its most important aspects. It requires an understanding of the wider situation which has spurred the movement to form in the first place and an appreciation of the different view points that such a movement attracts, both from those that support it and from its critics.
I am quoting here a big enough section of what is a long post, but its essential you read all of Richard’s points on Cunning Hired Knaves.
The choice of the Central Bank building has puzzled some people, given the presence of Ireland’s Own Private Tax Haven to the left of Connolly Station, but in reality, the logistical challenges posed by an IFSC occupation would have been insuperable for the small group of pioneers who took the first step. There is a severe lack of suitable public spaces in central Dublin. There are no spaces where citizens (in the broadest sense of the term) can freely engage in open dialogue about life in the polis, and besides, the Central Bank, now with its very own IMF technocrat, is a good a symbol of the unaccountable nature of ruling institutions –the Global Mubarak- as any.
Hang around Dame Street for a few hours, or a few days, as I did last week, and you begin to realise that something different is happening there. There are people standing around, talking about politics, and economics, and history in public. There is music and poetry and talks. This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in Dublin. In Dublin’s pubs, whose residual reputation as hives of political intrigue is wholly undeserved, they turn up the music so you stop talking about politics and start drinking and talking about football.
Some people in Ireland are impatient with the lack of sufficiently articulate political positions from the Dame Street. Given the dimensions of the crisis and other people’s failures, the impatience is understandable. But it’s important to bear in mind the immense material difficulties involved in maintaining an occupation in an urban space as sterile and inhospitable as that of Dublin.
Moreover the Dame Street occupation hasn’t had the same range or depth of sympathetic social movements to call on for assistance, as has been the case with other places.
But against the astroturf civil societies produced under neo-liberal governance, the Dame Street occupation has opened up a critical distance, not merely down at the site itself, but also on social networks, that enables people to subject the political system to radical questioning. This is in itself is a major achievement, and whatever happens to the occupation itself, it is hard to see how this achievement can ever be rolled back.
Discussion
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Comment by: David O'Donnell
Oct 22nd 2011 at 13:10
Fine BoI_lding down Dame Street that should not be neglected either - methinks we have paid more than enough for it at this stage.
But let’s not lose the run of ourselves - citizenry remains in the main as supine as ever …