8th amendment referendum Ireland

I thought there should be a thread on this, hello! I’ve been off urban the last four months working on the repeal campaign, and it’s shaping up to be a dozy.

For starts the anti choice brigade hired Kanto, a firm run by Tomas Broderick. Broderick’s mum was Boris’ Deputy manor, and did online strategy for the leave EU campaign, and before that worked for CA, so from the gate this was shaping up to be a nasty campaign

Fintan O’Toole: Abortion fake-news firestorm heading our way

I’ve helped set up a twitter account called @repeal_shield blocking and monitoring trolls on twitter, since we started we’ve blocked nearly 9,000 pro life trolls, not to mention plenty of Russian sockpupptets and bots, and abortion is a magnet issue for the alt right globally.




But the serious issue is dark money advertising and the American religious right, this fascinating thread will give you an insight into how bad it’s gotten.



And a brill open democracy piece.





The bullshit has spilled into real time with among other things 3 thirteen year girls smeared as Nazis at the international women’s day march



And

Colette Browne on Twitter

So it’s a really interesting situation and also my way of telling you “I ain’t dead”.

 

More power to your elbow. My family are out campaigning in Dublin. Best of luck.

 

High point of the campaign has been the Level of grassroots activism offline and online. Most of anti choice dirty tricks have been caught by repeal activists, before journalists get to them. Everyone from Labour to The Workers Soldarity movement are workin together. When the togethe4yes campaign launched they set a goal to raise 50k and raised 8 times that in a day. HCP and advocacy groups are being enormously effective on social media getting their position across eloquently and passionately. But the dark money Facebook shit really kicked into gear this weekend. Going to only get ugly(er) from here on in.

 

Good luck with your work and hope the referendum passes.

 

Good work 8den. Best of luck to you and everyone else working hard on this.

 

Thanks for the reminder, I've sent off to some local groups to see if there's any folk heading over the border to canvass. Keep up the good work.

 

I'm off home for the weekend I've arranged to help with leafleting in Monaghan Town. The group i'm helping report that the Yes side have had a fairly decent response so far.

 

Was talking to my best mate last night, he mused that that cervical smear scandal might just tip wavering voters towards Yes as the general argument could be made that the state doesn't care about women.

 

Bloody hell, I fucking hope so.

 

Good luck with this, 8den and welcome back

 

Good article here by Kitty Holland talking to people in Darndale about their intentions to vote and which way they will vote. For those that don't know Darndale is one of the most disadvantaged areas in Dublin. It seems the observation made during the equality referendum that 'Bigger the car the less likely to share' is being reflected here.
Abortion vote: Socio-economic engagement divide in north Dublin

A couple of weeks ago I was home in Monaghan and I helped out with a leafleting session on the Diamond, we had to compete with some fundamentalist church from Armagh who were calling for a no vote and looking for people to join their flock. The response was all in all quite good, a slight majority of people were voting no, a minority Yes or undecided. The guy I was with said that the response when going door to door was more favourable. It doesn't take a genius to predict the vote will be ultra tight in in Cavan Monaghan.

 

What was the vote like there in 1983? Solid yes to the 8th, I'd imagine.

 

Good on you 8den
Been following the yes campaign on twitter

 

Yes, I think by 81%.
Will be closer this time round.

eta from Sally Rooney in the LRB LRB · Sally Rooney · An Irish Problem

 

'No' in this context is, 'no to the 8th amendment' not, 'no to repealing the 8th amendment' right?

 

The second one.

To vote for repeal, vote yes.

 

Ok it does make more sense that way round.

 

I've loads of Irish twitter pals so I hear a lot of their stories about going canvassing or just wearing the repeal badges. It goes from terrifying accounts of violent threats right up to lovely stories of old women (who are stereotyped as hardcore pro lifers) being very supportive and taking no shit! I still haven't seen any official opinion polls though.

 

Blindboy covred lots about this in his podcast, i hope it works and gets lads to register and vote!

 

‘Irish Times’ poll: Repeal has large but reduced lead

 

Listening to the news at home has turned grim, with that awful Jastine Valdez case (don't google it, non-Irish people, you don't want to know). For those of you at home, will this have any bearing on the vote? It feels like a bit more evidence that Ireland's a misogynistic country. . .

 

Your "Incels to the gulag" is apt. And muppets like David Begg can go with them.

 

fucking hell:


This would Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, I suppose? Does anyone know if she's still involved in 32CSM (if that even exists anymore)?

E2A: No, it wouldn't you eejit, BSM of the CSM was Sands' sister.

 

BSMcK is his sister rather than his niece ?

 

THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS

 

What do we expect from them. In 2002 I was flyposting on Camden Street, a couple of bigots went to a skip across the road and started throwing bits of bricks at me and the guy I was with...always with a threat of violence these pricks.

I think they've lost. The talk coming from the Anti Repeal side is now that they would agree with terminations in the case of incest and rape. Bullshit of course. Their campaign has been shit, quick out of the blocks but mired in the same old intimidation and fear. The posters have back fired on them, their use of a DS kid without permission, their disregard of children growing up in poverty all speaks to their hypocrisy. The yes campaign has being daring and imaginative and located in places where they never have been before Monaghan Together for Yes

I'm more hopeful than I was in 2002. The thing that I fear is that a win for repeal will see the hard anti choice become a focus for the hard right in Ireland, and building a movement, with Ganley or a Healy Rae at its head but that's a worry for another day.

 

Some of them will resort to physical force methods, and not just throwing bits of brick at people either.

 

twitter not usually a place for good feelings but this is pretty special. News about #hometovote on Twitter

 

It’s giving me a wobbly lip