In a response to the ‘Occupy Dame Street’ camp which has been stationed outside the Central Bank since Saturday afternoon Socialist Party/United Left Alliance TDs Clare Daly and Joe Higgins will seek a debate in the Dáil this week around the demands of the camp.
Clare Daly said:
This camp initiative comes on the back of the highly significant Occupy Wall Street camp and protests which over the last week have spread across the US.
Here we see a strata of young people, unemployed and workers raising core questions about the nature of the capitalist system, specifically the so called 1% who hold the levers of economic and political power. The camp in Dame Street has met with a very positive response from passers by who obviously identify with the sentiment of the campers.
Joe Higgins said:
I welcome this protest movement and party colleagues are participating in the daily assemblies being convened at the camp. There are lively and democratic debates about the type of policies needed to respond to the crisis of mass unemployed and cuts in social spending.
Their is an understandable hostility among some of the participants to all political parties and to the trade unions. Our members are fraternally pointing out which parties are truly part of the political establishment and we are likewise advocating that those critical of the trade unions differentiate between the leadership and the rank and file who should be made welcome at the camp in the same manner they have been in Wall Street.
