'Great Irish Unwelcome' Protest To Take Place In Doonbeg For Trump Visit

0:00Sure thing there and thanks for having us on. So the reason just to say this is a protest, this is a protest that a whole range of groups from across the country are involved in and so they're coming from an environmentally human rights and anti-war perspective. Some of them are coming kind of from a feminist perspective and some of them are from the LGBTQ community and it'll say something about a president of a country that groups from such different backgrounds all see the purpose in coming together to protest that particular president and his actions. So the reasons that we're doing this, you know, there to do with, we've seen the the, we've seen the two presidencies of Donald Trump as being extremely destructive as having been, you know, far from ending wars as he said from contributing hugely to warfare, contributing to

1:00an ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is one of the key reasons that I'll be protesting him, supporting and arming that genocide, you know, kidnapping sovereign leaders of countries, attacking Iran, you know, infesting, for example, we had made huge progress in Ireland around, you know, around fossil fuels and around not providing support for the practice of fracking, which is, you know, extracting natural gas and now we seem to be in a position because of Donald Trump's drill, baby drill, that he's bringing us all backwards towards fossil fuels. He has undermined trans people's rights, reproductive rights, migrants rights, you know, and we're really watching, we're watching the kind of toxicity of this particular presidency spread, you know, we're watching it spread and we're watching it kind of undermine all of the things that most of us stand for and that's what that's what has us protesting it. You know, we don't think, you know, Donald Trump is not an ordinary hotelier coming to Claire. He's a leader of the most powerful

2:06the most heavily funded military in the entire world and he's causing absolute havoc at the moment and we think that, you know, there's almost an obligation on us to make sure that people around the world know that people in Ireland don't stand for this and don't support this. So that's why we're doing this and the protest will be in both in Shannon and in the Dunebag area. So it would be, there'll be two different areas for that and obviously the protest in Shannon will be drawing attention again to the fact that that under Donald Trump, even under this government, that there's been continued permission and use of Shannon Airport by the US military, even as it's engaged in completely illegal acts that are illegal under international law. And look, of course, as always, there's going to be alternative views and opinions from even supporters of Trump to all of those points, but there'll be a lot of people that will be coming to Dunebag this week and from West Claire that will all take the view that politics should

3:06be left to one side and that, and that, and that, that, that, that, that, that Donald Trump has created a resource that is capable of attracting the Irish open and that will undoubtedly bring huge boost to the economy of Dunebag in the wider West Claire region over the coming weeks ahead and there'll be of the opinion that a protest spectacle is possibly the last thing that Claire needs when it's in the sharp window. What do you say to that? Well, you know, I have, I mean, it might sound strange to you, but I have a lot of sympathy for that position because we, you know, we have seen people in rural Ireland struggle to have sustainable livelihoods in their community and, you know, certainly, certainly, they, they, you know, like I often think back to the fact that actually the Gulf course in Dunebag, it was the community, it was community initiatives that created that Gulf course in the first place, but our local communities in Claire, they shouldn't have to give token support for a genocide, the worst of all crimes, in order to have jobs in the hospitality

4:08and service industry. You know, that's not, that's not a fair deal. It has never been a fair deal anywhere, people's precarious employment. You know, like if we, if we think about it, how, how would we feel, for example, we're, you know, for example, if another world's leader owned the hotel and was committing such acts, you know, those, those really are the things like ideally, you know, we have no absolutely no issue, of course, we have no issue with the people in Dunebag and the people in West Claire, but I think you'd find, you know, there's going to be an awful lot of people from West Claire that are involved with us and are at our protests as well, you know, most people, most people understand that actually standing for human rights and standing against the kind of toxic tyranny that is being wreaked on the world by Donald Trump and the others who support him, that you know, those are much, much bigger things than a Gulf tournament. They're even much bigger things than a job, you know, important and all as that, that job is, you know, I think all of us remember, I'm not making a direct comparison, but all of us remember the New York bird trials where,

5:11you know, only following orders is not really a justification for, it's not really a justification or an excuse for being part of an atrocity. And, you know, that's not what we're saying about, about the community in Claire, but we are saying Donald Trump 100% is part of committing atrocities in the world. He is both a war criminal and is undermining democracy. He's been undermining our institutions, all the institutions that Ireland supports, the UN, the convention on human rights, the human rights courts, the climate change initiatives, all of the things that we support that are our direct government policy to support Trump is undermining all of those things. So, you know, basically we would see that there is an obligation to protest. And I think, you know, I think that most, you know, most Irish people are well able to hold nuanced positions in terms of that they can understand that aspects of something can be good while the overall thing is harmful. And that's

6:12what our feeling is at the protest is that the overall welcoming of Donald Trump under the current conditions to Dune bag at the moment, particularly any level of state welcome that we would condemn that to be honest. And we would condemn that and we would say no countries like ours need to stand up. Small as we are, we need to say we stand, it doesn't matter what the United States stands for, we stand for human rights and we stand for international law. And like those aren't radical things to say, you know what I mean, those are, those are fairly accepted, they're fairly accepted world standards, they're not. And Ther, do we know exactly where this protest will take place? Have you been allocated as far as people based in Claire? We've been doing our best for the last three weeks to liais with under the Shia Cona and to get them to allocate or to tell us where there's an allocated place so that people civil right to protest can be respected and can be justified. Unfortunately, unfortunately, despite them telling us they are going to make such a space available, they haven't

7:13confirmed that with us. And you know, our hope really, our hope really is that we're visible and that we're allowed. And people know that there are different opinions about Donald Trump. But, you know, we can't, you know, without the cooperation, we can't ensure that it won't cause any disruption if we're not being facilitated to exercise our political and civil rights. And that's our, we would really hope to hear back from the Guardian around that, around what we've heard what they're doing about security for Donald Trump. We haven't heard what they're doing to ensure that democratic rights of people in Ireland to protest to assemble are also being guaranteed at the time.