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feature
 Monday May 09, 2011 10:24 by éirígí PRO - éirígí
"Posters are a vital political tool"
In a blatant and outrageous act of political censorship Dublin City Council is attempting to impose an unprecedented ban on posters advertising political protests. This poster ban represents a very real attack on the right to political expression, the right to organise politically and the right to assembly. If it's a clean city they want, let's do our share
and clean parts of it:
The ban is due to come into effect from May 15th to May 25th, during which time both the 'British Queen' and US president Barack Obama are to visit Dublin. Those applying for permission to erect posters have been sent the following email by the council: 'I wish to advise you that your application has been refused. This decision has been taken on the basis that no postering applications for events between 15th and 25th May are being granted in the interest of promoting a clean environment for Dublin City during forthcoming State visits.'
Related Links: These links relate to when the change occured so that you had to get permission to put up a poster. Before that you did not need permission. -i.e another bit of our basic democratic rights were lost then. Only a fool would believe that the council's ban is motivated by anything other than a desire to censor those who are opposed to the two state visits. No such ban was in place when the Prince of Monaco visited Dublin in May. Nor did the visits of George Bush or Tony Blair require a 'clean enviroment' devoid of political dissent. Posters are a vital political tool that are used the world over to challenge the hegemony of the state and corporate media. Dublin City Council's ban on postering is an attack on the right to freedom of expression, the right to organise politically and the right to public assembly. Whether you are in favour of the Windsor and Bush visits or not is irrelevant. All right thinking people need to rally against state censorship. This week it may be those who oppose the Windsor and Bush visits that are being silenced but next week it will be those who oppose the IMF, the EU and the government. How long before community groups and trade unions find themselves the victim of Dublin City Council's 'clean enviornment' censorship?
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Comments (18 of 18)
Jump To Comment: 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1I expect that the decision to allow the inhuman-appearing queen to meet with people other than
Bertie Ahern (who is trying to hock Irish forestry) , Amanda Brunker (who writes *books* ) and the
rest of the guests at Dublin castle was because of a comment made by an Irish Journalist on
Twitter about how empty the city was.
Dublin was empty because poor people were told to stay away and because protest was sidelined.
This is part of the Irish character , locking-down a whole city so as not to be embarassed by a few
protests. This is a navvy-stance and it failed. it ruined the postcards for FG/Lab to have a city empty
of ordinary people to facilitate their UK tourist-drive. it probably embarassed Seamus Heaney to
share a room with Bertie Ahern , but if you're going to go around paying 'pass the parcel' with public funds
and prizes, you may as well get your money's worth.
I am pretty sure that ryan Tubridy (who sports a royal avatar and thinks he looks like King George),
will be getting book-deals and prizes to pen his part into irish history, just like he did with the
Kennedy visit.
twats will be lunching out on the glamour of having a city stopped for them for quite sometime,
only thing to do is switch off the TV narrative, don't buy the papers and ignore the bunk that
presents itself as Irish society- its a falsity.
its a long way away,but when the money starts drying up they will spend as much of it as the can on repression.they will push us to rebellion.seizing tricolours,restricting movement of dublin citizens all for one stupid toe rag.the left needs to get its act together in a big way. the lack of any unifed campaign against this visit is to all our shame.rebellion!
What never ceases to amaze me is how selective some people in this country are in condemning violence. The person who has done us the honour of paying us a visit is the head of the British armed forces that have played a significant role in the deaths of a million Iraqis, not to mention the carnage in Afghanistan. In Libya, they have launched another resource war resulting in more deaths including children. I have not seen any reports of the violence in Dublin, as I don’t take any ‘reports’ from our ‘public service’ seriously. The only ray of light is the picture of Gilmore looking like a waiter anxiously awaiting a tip from ‘her majesty’; Comrade Stalin must be turning in his grave.
They've gone wild altogether!
Heres a clip I got off them having a go at some stickers that got in their way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm1oXTRyE0k
I am surprised that anyone is surprised that the security forces are conducting a rigorous campaign against litter. With the forthcoming visits of her majesty and President Obama, we have got to make the right impression, As our leader has said, we have to give her majesty a right royal welcome. The only problem that now exists is to find out what a right royal welcome is. What such a welcome should consist of is of course highly subjective.
What legal right police have to pull down posters? None! Or to visit areas and ask door-to-door what people's politics are (as done in Ballybough)? None! Or to declare whole streets closed to traffic, or even to pedestrians, those attending a planned function in those areas having to supply names and dates of birth in advance? Arguably no legal right either.
The cost of these visits is already huge in extra policing (yes, some places have cops 24 hours and plenty more around), in security measures, as well as in those less quantifiable but still very real areas such as loss of liberty and in damage to pride and self-esteem.
Yes, let's keep doing it! Legally in full view; and out of view ... well ....
Just in from postering for eirigi Freedom Camp.Got great response from members of the public.Unfortunately the Gardai were less enthuasiastic.Got stopped by passing members of the Traffic Corps(not sure what business postering is of theirs generally)was asked had i obtained permission had details taken and then Gardai proceeded to photograph poster and road signage.They even had the audacity to ask me how many posters i planned to erect and where to which i proudly replied thousands and whereever there is an available lampost.
eirigi has hundreds of posters left and anyone who believes in the free rights to erect same are welcome to either join them with postering or do your own thing,posters will be provided.
I saw two cops on the North Strand pulling down eirigi posters earlier this evening. As far as I know they have no legal powers to do so. Has anyone else noticed the amount of cops around town over the last few days. This place is getting more like Pinochet's Chile every day.
It is of course political censorship by DCC and not for the first time. A couple of years ago a number of protesting groups in O'Connell St. were told by litter wardens not to hand out leaflets. One of those warned was myself, while protesting Spanish state repression (ironically!) against the Basque Country.
In reply to my challenge as to by what right I was being told to stop I was told that O'Connell St, Henry St. and some areas were already under a new ban and that soon the whole city centre would be. I said that I would pick up any discarded leaflets (as we always do) but would not stop handing them out and he said if he found even one leaflet, even around the corner, he'd be issuing me a summons.
Later that evening I walked a short stretch of the street and picked up sweet and crisp packet wrappers, some shop till receipts, some fast food wrappers, and some discarded Bus Átha Cliath tickets, but not a single political leaflet of any kind. Do you think any of those companies were or are being threatened? Cigarette butts and chewing gum create huge amounts of litter and probably the gum alone costs thousands to remove. Do we anticipate a ban on the sale of these items in the city centre? Of course not!
Good idea, 'sandwich board man'. We should put the names of the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings of 17/05/1974 on to the sandwich boards.
There's always a thin line between "outrageous" and "typical" when it comes to the Irish state....an ideology of independence and republicanism while hosting the biggest U.S. military hub for the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, the more recent handing over of the economy to the I.M.F.
Here it has criminalised the very act that created it.
The putting up of a poster - "The Proclamation" - if all had gone well at the time, the occupiers would have read it and left!
Jeus wept!
Connolly wept etc etc
With the Queen and Obama coming within days of each other, it's a change of shift between the old and new colonial masters. Time to ditch the oversized leprechaun hats and speak out, act up!
RTE´s Pat Kenny gave decent enough coverage to the Queens visit last Thursday (5th May 2011), points were well made by Brian Leeson and Robert Ballagh.
show info - http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2011-05-05.html
play show - http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-r1-todaywithpatkenny....smil
Presume theres no law to stop people from communicating in the old school way of the sandwich board man?
sandwich board man - old school way to make your point
You shouldn't have to get permission to put up posters which is the case now and for the queen's visit they are not only being refused but there is an outright ban so that the city looks clean. What a joke! Do they really expect people to swallow such lies?
What would be interesting is to make up some fake posters with Guinness or Heinken logos on it that announces some kind of party to welcome the queen and see if the council is as quick to ban them or take them down. Of course they would be very slow to do both which would expose these bogus arguments that they put up.
In fact what the council should be doing is erecting public billboards on every street in the city centre area and many other public places to faciliate people to put up notices and posters of all kinds in addition to allowing posters the way it used to be. This could be easily done very quickly and cheaply. It would be handy for when people finally get fed up with this EU bailout and decide to organise a General Strike. But of course the council is never going to faciliate that sort of thing.
This was under litter laws and some parties argued that if a poster (like) 'fell on your head' that
the council would be liable for injury claims !!
They almost got away with it, as the mysteries of the council chamber have allowed significant
're-zoning initiatives (historically , of course) , revolving lobbyist-doors, unwonted corruption and
a mock whip-system which aped that of the Dáil.
Question here is how to show people that a city council in 2011 is effecting rights of speech and assembly
in advance of a contentious and expensive visit by a constitutional monarch and that office's negative relation
to aspects of Irish History?
Maybe use light art?? - projection - performance
DCC really ought to have learned that they cannot interfere with rights to assembly and protest by now
and that the council ain't a proving ground for the higher corruptions of political office, because honestly
the need for political reform is general in Ireland at this point. The vested interests have huge shoulder-chips
and seem to transmit it right into our corrupting pol-culture.
Tis great to see the simple very effective method of A4 Sticky posters are all the rage.
Q. Where is D.C.C Law agent Terence O'Keeffe getting his alleged authority to impose ANY ban on anyone erecting posters in our City?
Write him a Letter asking for a copy of any by law ,if any , that may exist. It don't matter if one does, all would violate art.40 of our Constitutional rights anyway and be unlawful. Statutes already violate our Sovereign rights as it is.
Plaster the Town with them guys.
funny how commercial advertisements don't get treated in the same way as Activist posters. Its only grassroots attempts to organise that are litter. DCC are well known for their zero tolerance for activism notices. Its purely political and has little to do with their desire to protect the environment for the citizens of dublin. Unless its keeping the environment free of radical new grassroots movements that is
What difference does it make? Eirigi stickers are still being stuck to every surface, and will remain long after liz & barry have left. It's not like Eirigi follow the rules anyway. The stickers are litter, and should be treated as such.
btw I'd say the same for stickers by any political party.