Pic: the blockade of the first truck
Local activists met up at 8am in Cabra before finding and blockading the first truck just off Faussagh road. As usual relations with the bin workers were very good with a lot of banter exchanged. A few minutes later a second truck was spotted and this was blockaded as well around 150m from the first. A short while later a couple of bin inspectors arrived in a car to confirm that the trucks were blockaded.
The number of protesters started to grow after 9.30am as parents who had left their children into school turned up to join the protest. Others had volunteered to come down later in the day, by the evening we hope to have a hundred or more around the trucks.
As this was going on at 10am a picket started to form outside the High court where Fingal councils application for a permanent injunction is to be heard. The Gardai had arrived at the Cabra protest but were obviously far more nervous then the people on the blockade.
Count injunction or otherwise they are aware that arresting people on the estates where they live is going to cause considerable resistance. As it is they have loads of legislation under the Public Order Act with which to hassle and arrest protesters. To date they have not dared to use this on the estates and have confined themselves to asking people for their names. Some people gave their names this morning in Cabra while others claimed to be Bertie Ahern or Celia Larken.
All bins are still being collected in Cabra, the action today was to demonstrate to the council that we will not accept their salami tactics of picking off areas one by one. Cabra is probably one of the best organised city areas thanks to the hard work over three years of the local activists. A mass meeting Monday night attracted hundreds of local residents, determined to defeat the council. Todays action again demonstrates that we intend to set the agenda in this struggle rather then allow the council to dictate the time and place.
Later this week I'm aware that other areas in the Dublin area are planning similar blockades with a Dublin wide activists meeting on city to decide whether to escalate this to all areas. The argument to blockade every truck until the councils collect everyones bins is so obvious that it is hard to see any other decisions being made. Actions like todays demonstrate that estate blockades easily involve local residents and in most cases will be much harder for the Gardai to suppress then protests elsewhere.
Andrew
see also
Massive anti-bin tax meeting in
Cabra
The decision to flex the muscle of the campaign by this action was
taken on Monday night at a meeting in Cabra. The massive meeting of
between 500 to 600 people took place in St. Finbarr's GAA Club.
Using these pictures: If you want to use these pictures for the web or other
publications then please credit them as follows : Workers Solidarity
Movement, http://struggle.ws/wsm.html.
If you normally pay for pictures through an agency or freelance photographer then we request the same fee (which will go to our international solidarity fund) as we don't want to do anyone out of a job! The versions on the web are compressed versions of the originals, if you are using them for printed publication you should email us with the picture titles so we can email you the higher quality versions.