Let’s talk about one week in Dublin city. Last Wednesday, a group of men arrived at a mostly derelict yard on Prussia Street in Stoneybatter in Dublin to evict people who were seeking to both live in it, and transform the site into a community resource. The nascent squat, known as Sunnyvale, or That Social Centre, had flown under the radar since the site was occupied in September, when the collective posted a message on social media: “We have occupied an empty corner of Stoneybatter. Houses, warehouses, caravans, buddleia [butterfly bush], and wide open space. What more could you want? It’s time once again to take a space that has been left to rot by profiteers, and turn it into a place of energy, community and resistance. We want to make the space as open as possible and would like to encourage its use by groups working towards radical change, members of the local community, and projects that have a social function.”
Their quiet community aspirations – they hosted bike repair workshops with tea and cake available – were literally smashed. Over the course of the day, more and more gardaí arrived, as did supporters who had seen extraordinary videos of the eviction on social media. A garda helicopter was flying overhead as I looked through a hole in the gate at the entrance of the yard. Inside, men who had apparently carried out the eviction wandered around aimlessly.
When a garda announced those protesting could be arrested for criminal damage, indignant and incredulous roars went up. To illustrate what damage had been done, and by whom, protesters raised the shutters on one of the buildings to show gardaí what they claimed were windows smashed from the inside out. Gardaí advanced to pull protesters away from the front of the building, and then found themselves wedged between the building and the protesters.
Boiling frustrations
Eventually, gardaí facilitated the departure of two white vans from the property, pulling and pushing protesters out of the way. If this kind of stuff keeps happening, it’s very obvious that frustration will boil over.
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That evening, Frank McDonald was launching his new book, A Little History of the Future of Dublin, in the Little Museum of Dublin on St Stephen’s Green. While that was happening, a couple of hundred people, including many who lived in the immediate area of Prussia Street, gathered in the rain to show their support for those who had been chased out of the squat earlier that day. It was a joyous scene. People stood on the roof of the building, sat in the windows, legs dangling, and played songs by young Irish artists from a speaker; CMAT, Kneecap and TPM, the latter having a call-and-response hook in one of their songs that goes “F**k Fine Gael and f**k Fianna Fáil too” which pretty much sums up the growing sentiment of many young people in the capital.
On Thursday, news broke that the Science Gallery was going to close. The gallery on Pearse Street is an Irish success story. It too has a community that doesn’t just visit or present work there, but uses the event spaces and the cafe, and accesses Trinity’s campus in a manner that other universities have failed to encourage among local residents.
On Friday, came the news that one of the largest bookshops in the country, Chapters on Parnell Street, was closing. Chapters is unique in the capital given its long history and extensive secondhand section, making it accessible to those who don’t necessarily have the funds to shell out for new books, or who enjoy looking for hidden gems.
Homogenous erasure
On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered again in Smithfield to protest the proposed hotel development on the site of the Cobblestone pub, and chanted “Homes not hotels. Culture not vultures.” The demonstration took over O’Connell Bridge, with a céilí, music session and ballad singing – “Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown, the passing tales and glories, that once was Dublin town . . .”
The housing crisis, the amenities crisis, the terrible development, the demolition of cultural spaces, the character of the city being erased by homogenous buildings – and the huge level of frustration that nobody either in local or national government appears to be acknowledging, never mind trying to address – is coalescing in a very real way.
Every incident has its own unique set of circumstances, but people are connecting the dots and creating alliances. At Saturday’s demonstration, speakers didn’t just talk about the Cobblestone. They came from the renters’ union (the Community Action Tenants’ Union) and the Save Moore Street campaign. Despondency has turned to anger, and that is transforming into action. The catalysts keep coming. The tipping points are creating boiling points. As the temperature drops, the heat on the streets is rising. So there are now two key questions: to what extent will the city be allowed fail under this government if they last until 2025? And in the meantime, how long will it be, in this heady atmosphere, until something kicks off?