4 protests & a meeting- how the left got outflanked in street politics & the country lanes became the wildcard.

Today I am going to tell you a tale of four protests and a meeting that came, incidentally, to shape the whole scenario we are now facing as a broad left with everything from immigration to the fuel protests. Of course, when ringing the alarm bells back in 2023, I wasn't taken seriously by my colleagues in the rest of the left when I privately contacted people in other parties to voice my concerns over some information I will go into shortly. It is understandable why: a new outfit (Roots) attempting rural and deprived regional towns organising with no prior experience, no funding, and basically nothing but a sense of urgency and a collection of characters. I don't, for the record, blame the people I contacted for not taking the information seriously. Ye might now, though.

Part 1: The Gresham House Deal/Forestry Protests and the Missed Opportunity

Protestors from various groups including one of ours at the Gresham House Deal Protest

On January 26th, 2023, I and a handful of others from Roots as well as an assortment of environmentalists, farmers & rural people attended a protest outside the Dáil that was attended by a good but not huge coalition of the people against our land and forestry being sold off to a City of London investment fund. The protest was preceded by a Sinn Féin motion to try to block the deal. At the same time, there was a small anti-trans protest at the opposite side of the Dáil gates, it being the early days of Enoch Burke discourse. Richard Boyd Barrett addressed us all on the forestry protest in unison as a united front against the selling off of our resources while the anti-trans crowd with their big sound system tried to drown us out and shout us down. Partway through his address, we were mobbed by a few full of aggro with heavy Dublin accents calling PBP paedos, some incoherent anti-trans nonsense, and loudly shouting that "Paul Murphy was run out of Tallaght." They were fucked off back to their own side of the gates by a couple of mine, as well as some Leitrim and Clare farmers who were having none of it and were told Boyd Barrett was there with us, supporting us, and who did they think they were by the same. They tried a few times, and eventually the guards stepped in and put them back where they were. That was a very different time, when there was potential for sectoral unity, especially in the poorer rural areas after a succession of bad years that have only gotten worse. This is the point, in my opinion, where things really started to go awry. We started specifically in this era because we could see the threat looming of the country being lost to the left if unity between environmental protection and rural communities couldn't be found, and that it would take a structural change in how we manage the environment while being amenable to the needs of rural communities—hence our stance of agroecology. Enough of blowing our own trumpet, however, because all of us have failed to avert the current situation; we just became closer witnesses to the unravelling due to lack of organisation, divides, and absolutely no funding to drive traction. A tale familiar to the whole lot of us on the left. This is about introspection as much as it is about finger-pointing. As the cliché goes, when you point the finger at someone, three of your own are pointing back at you.

Part 2: The Meeting

Not long after the forestry protests, in February 2023, I was invited to what was supposed to be an open grassroots meeting of farmers and country people. It was supposed to be about rural Ireland, and I accidentally got invited to help organise it because they seemed to mistake what I was due to a horse contact of mine being involved and was well used to me arguing about various organisations and the government in the horse groups on Facebook. What it was, however, was the single biggest astroturfing event I have ever witnessed. A huge number of ordinary people arrived, were met by the entire chocolate box of the emerging far right playing their "concerns" drum integrated in the audience, and we heard from everyone from slibhín independents to FF backbenchers, to outright fascists, including some fella with black sunglasses and an entourage whose name was never given and who had to flee Romania of all places due to his political views, which were never expanded upon fully. At the time this was terrifying, and it has unfortunately become more mundane. To say that I was distressed would be an understatement.

POV: Me sitting by the door helping a right-wing breakaway republican collect the money.

So then came the intermission, the tea break. I was outside having a smoke, trying to figure out how the hell do I leave? I arrived by public transport and walked out to the hotel where it was held. Out comes the lad who was on the door with me, followed by a bunch having a sidebar meeting. In the confusion, two different crowds thought I was with the other crowd, and I became privy to a meeting of the rural and immigration takeover plans of the entire right. Which can be summarised as the following: "We need to take down Sinn Féin or we do not have a hope of gaining traction for right nationalism," and "Between the immigration and the farmers, our time is now." There were more specific details of the time regarding specific plans, but essentially it was that their key to take deprived urban areas was immigration, and it was rural discontent with the behaviour of the Greens in the rural areas. At this point now, none of this is news. Also, they have been arming themselves since at least then, especially in West Cork—that may be of news to a lot of ye. During the tea break, three-quarters of those in attendance got the heebie-jeebies and ran. I didn't know what to do, so I pretended I needed the loo when the chat had died down into banter and ended up then with some woman from the now-defunct Identity Ireland trying to be besties with me. I locked myself in a stall and texted my lads. I was the only one there because it was in Athlone, and we are all in a ribbon along the south of the country, Munster and south Leinster. We decided I had no choice but to clap at the right time, smile like a gobshite, and wait to leave. If I called my boyfriend to come with the car, he would be hours, and he would have started a riot. Then one of them recognised me from the forestry protests, and I could see some of them—they were waiting too. As luck would have it, I knew a man there. He looked equally uncomfortable; he was there with his small organic business for the advertising opportunity. As he thought. I went up to him and said, "What do you think of all this?" to feel him out in case he had turned. He responded, "It's all a bit extreme," feeling me out. Long story short, we decided I would pretend that he asked me to help pack up his van, that he needed to go somewhere, and he would get me out of there with him, to the backdrop of thinly veiled ranting from the National Party pretending to be audience members. I got into his van, and he peeled out of the car park, and we both unloaded in stress at each other about how mad it all was and what we had both experienced.

He wanted to drive me further back the country and wasn't happy about leaving me out on my own, but I would have found it more difficult to get out of the area he was from by public transport; I would have had to stay the night, and I didn't want to tell my family what was wrong yet and panic them. I stupidly asked to be dropped to the station. From there, I hid amongst a group of students and thought I was safe until, in the queue for the Galway train, I felt an arm around my shoulders and a voice saying, "Hello, with any luck we might get sitting together."

Long story short, it was a fella from one of the groups (not the parties) who guided me up the train and put me sitting inside him on a two-seat back row with few around, and told me, "Tell me about this party of yours." And I did. There was no point in bullshitting him, whatever hope I had at five foot two on my own. He listened away, and I was told he saw potential, was given a phone number, and an offer of being a front party in return for support and funding. This was the first of two times I would be made such an offer; the other was just before the 2024 election, when, if I agreed, I would have been given full funding and canvassers. Both of which I turned down. I will not reveal the who & what finer detail of either unless I am forced to, because it both sounds fanciful & would have repercussions. Rest assured though, I’m not the only person with the details. 

I know full well it wasn't a coincidence. He arrived by car with another man from the same area and passed out what should have been his stop to talk to me. I then left the Galway train in Galway and ran into Supermac's to await the bus to Limerick. On the bus, because there was basically no one on it barring me and some foreign students going back to Limerick after the weekend, I rang the only person I could think of: an older man I knew in the North who was involved in the trade unions and antifascism back in the day. He advised me who to go to down here with it in the left-wing parties, and I did. PBP never answered me—I think they just thought I was cracked. Sinn Féin did. The Sinn Féin man I spoke to believed me, but I don't think it progressed up the line to be dealt with much further than him. I gave full details to Sinn Féin. I haven't spoken of this publicly, out in the open in detail, before because I had hoped someone beyond me might have dealt with it by now, and I am an easy target. I was also afraid of being considered a lunatic. At this juncture, however, I do not have a choice.

Bonus footnote: The Ireland For All March

On, I believe, it was the 3rd of March 2023, we attended the Ireland for All March. It was after this that all attendees of the Ireland for All march became essentially a list of targets by the forces from my earlier entries. This became a pivotal moment where the right began systematically targeting every organisation that attended that march, my own included. It was one of the last times that a united left would march on the streets of Dublin unopposed. It was tainted by the inclusion of the main government parties, and there will be more on this and the overall immigration situation in another related article in the near future, as analysis of this period and what surrounded the march requires much more singular attention.

The Interval Period (March 2023 – January 2025)

This was marked by many events that I will cover at another time, specifically pertaining to the urban working class, which requires its own analysis. This article specifically pertains to the lead-up to the present moment, the fuel prices protests. It was, however, in this period that the new bussed-around, hypermobile, well-funded far-right front started to be brought around to cross-pollinate with, frighten, and mobilise communities around the country in the dying villages and failing regional towns where the majority of the IPAS centres would go up. This would go with gritted teeth and very little action from the left, as we were forced into a position of constantly reacting rather than acting. It was inside this strategic experiment that a new reality emerged: an inverse intersectional solidarity. Groups of people aligned against their own interests by the right, diametrically opposed to one another and the right in regards to interests, emerged. Drug addicts standing beside pioneers. Single mothers standing alongside both men with domestic abuse records and religious traditionalists. Rural campaigners and urban disadvantaged community campaigners standing alongside lads who by night break into their garages. That's nothing to say of people claiming to be Irish patriots standing alongside Orangemen and loyalist paramilitaries.

Part 3: The Mercosur Protests in Athlone

This was the final turnabout on the road.

On the 10th of January 2025, I attended the anti-Mercosur protests in Athlone with a handful from Roots, and we were joined by, outside of Sinn Féin speakers, what can best be described as the Sinn Féin Junior B team. Not that we were anything better of a showing, but we are a decimal point of their size. The most shocking part? Opposition to Mercosur in Ireland was Sinn Féin's baby that they just let Independent Ireland rob and lead. I cannot fathom why. Sinn Féin has opposed Mercosur for longer than most of our readership has been alive. Even in the lead-up to this, they held a series of public informational meetings about essentially the dangers of Mercosur from the moment that the Catherine Connolly campaign was over. Bar us, however, who by comparison have been around a wet week, paradoxically Sinn Féin, who are mostly liberals, were the only left opposition to the single most destructive trade deal to reach us in a generation. It has everything.

For the environmentalists: Incentivising the burning of the Amazon, the lungs of the world, so that the German industrial powerhouse can pollute more in order to sell more polluting vehicles to South America.

For the anti-colonialists, Palestine, and anti-war movements: Argentina is displacing the native Mapuche people from their Patagonian homeland and even trying to lay the blame on them, claiming they are burning themselves out of their own land, so that the land can be sold for a pittance, highly devalued, to Israeli settlers to establish ranches to take advantage of Mercosur export to Europe.

For the trade unionists: Offshoring food processing labour to areas with poorer workers' rights and often collusion between organised crime and the bosses.

For the health conscious: Multiple endocrine disruptors and carcinogens banned here are legal in Mercosur countries.

For all of us: This unsafe, ultra-destructive meat will be sold cheaply in volume to the poorest, especially because they will not be able to afford better, especially when farms go under and our own meat becomes a luxury product. As usual, health and food safety is becoming the sole preserve of the wealthy.

My mother is a breast cancer survivor. In her honour, and all the women who have suffered the same, this was my sign on the day:

I know full well why the left haven't moved on this. It's liberal aestheticism, let's be honest. There is absolutely no other reason, and this horseshit is the death of the left globally. It's not Insta story discourse-friendly. So nearly thirty years of republican opposition to Mercosur and similar neoliberal trade deals got dropped like a hot pan and handed to Independent Ireland. That's liberalism for you. Who was in attendance? A few of the various Dublin "Says No" crowds. You see, lads, funnily, Athlone isn't Antarctica, and the train or bus goes both ways. They were stepped around on the march and largely ignored with the kind of quintessentially Irish "half nod, avert gaze, head down" politeness that we are all familiar with when passing the local troublemaker. But they were there, and they loudly proclaimed their support regardless.

So just for a summary: the largest protest ever to occur outside of Dublin—that was attended by people from all over the country, status quo voters finally feeling the pinch, not exclusively farmers mind, there were many from the broader foods sector, some of whom attended in their work uniforms—was attended by a small showing from a party most of our contributors and readership consider liberals (Sinn Féin), who had done the donkey work on the issue for years and couldn't properly rally their base for the final furlong, having gone arse over head at the final fence to be pipped by a fifty-to-one rank outsider… and one of the smallest, least organised, most spread out, most geographically and financially challenged socialist outfits in the entire country. This was the left's contribution. We pre-emptively handed the far right our lunch and hid behind the bike shed.

It's not only that we should have had a stronger showing regardless of who put on the party. It was that we should have, collectively, been putting on the party.

To summarise the numbers: there were at least 20,000 people attending. I would estimate thirty or so assorted leftists, perhaps more from what I saw. A few Sinn Féin speakers, a speaker from the Co-op Association, the usual Aontú and Independent Ireland lineup, about thirty to fifty "X place says no." None of the trade unions representing the food factory workers. And I had to listen to Richard O'Donoghue give a speech about solidarity. Seemingly after I left, they finished up with "Ireland's Call." You can probably hear in my tone I'm still mortified for us collectively.

Part 4: The Fuel Protests. The crescendo in a symphony of our own failure.

Crowds amassed on O’Connell Bridge

I would like to start this off by giving a big thank you to Paul Murphy and the less aesthetically concerned amongst PBP, along with AIA, CPI, Sinn Féin, and others. The fuel protests seem to have collectively woken us up a little. Regarding the Dublin protest, also some of the student groups, including the Trinity Students' Union, as well. I cannot begin to say how proud I am of every leftist that answered the call and showed up. As we all know, it wasn't easy. For most of us it was dangerous, and we had to endure both bullshittery and aspersions from the armchair left and outright abuse from our usual opposition.

I arrived in Dublin at 9 a.m. the first day (the Tuesday) because I was asked up by a comrade of my own to help set up and organise things. We were joined by a good few from Aontacht. So the status at day one, 9 a.m., of what would go on to be the biggest protest in a generation was: truckers, farmers, some Palestine people, some independent leftists, Roots, Aontacht, a triple Roots-IWW-Aontacht member, and I believe Granddads against Racism. Not a far-right enforcer yet. Gavin Pepper showed up a little later.

By midday we were joined by a few more leftists. Gavin Pepper still around, some po-faced middle-aged Karens that came with Pepper or the right-wing media, then on came Dwyer the dog-kicker and his bicycle brigade with their mobile phones strapped to them like shitty bodycams. The enforcers were here. They were all furious that we were there at all, let alone ahead of them and helping. They started abusing an older Kurdish man who was there in solidarity and support, draped in an Irish flag, because of course the fuel prices are the Western material effect of a geopolitical reality he was born into and lived his whole life in the midst of. Of course—and I would like any Eastern Europeans who think they can have solidarity with these cretins to realise—they started also abusing the Eastern Europeans there amongst the left. They at one stage demanded a Russian comrade of mine, who hasn't been in Russia since he was a child and opposes the war in Ukraine, to go back to his own country and fight for it. They called them every name under the sun. Ye are not equal to them in their mind, although they may put on the pretence of it when ye are useful. Please remember that.

We stood firm, and they continued riding their bicycles around trying to intimidate us and all other leftists in the area. I put up a post looking for any reinforcements in the area, and others of the left texted their friends the same. Some did come from various republican groups and, I believe, CPI.

By the time of the speeches and talks, they had assembled a thin bottle-blonde line about midway back the crowd, interspersed to shout at the speakers from Sinn Féin to make it look on their livestreams like a much larger crowd reaction than it was, with shouts of "traitors." They were well organised, now have better tactics and operations than we have, and they show in numbers. We had that a decade ago. We do not anymore. I am thirty-five years of age. I remember the discourse that surrounded PEGIDA being run out of Dublin. I remember when Irish antifascists were organised, disciplined, and when, if you were in trouble and being threatened by far-right thugs, you could call on them. That generation of antifascists emigrated, got burned out, or settled down since, and were never replaced.

To make it worse, the liberalism has gone so bad that I got eviscerated by a younger leftist—in spite of their social media support of the protests—in a spineless vaguepost for looking for backup and intervention while it was early enough for us to be able to do something. Stating, amongst other things, that I didn't have "the right" to dictate who could be at a protest, even when the person I was objecting to specifically targets the community of the person who was having a go at me. Supporting the protests in public, admonishing me—a syndicalist, you know, anarchist-adjacent, antifascist, anti-apparatus of the state—for alerting antifascists to one of the worst characters we have in the country trying to capture a protest, trying to alert the protestors (who the government had actively threatened with the army hours before) about the movements of the army when I passed them on the road. It's not that I am perfect. I have gotten things wrong and done things wrong at different stages; we all have. But this spontaneous self-consumption needs to stop. I wouldn't do it to anybody, and, TBH, trying to help people do better while not publicly stoning them has often caused problems for me. This is not about the specific person—in the past they had been a good friend—it is about the thousands of different little things and the liberal capture of the left that led to that. If anyone does incidentally recognise who I am talking about, just leave them alone. They are a person with their own shit to go through and aren't always too well. It's the trend I want recognised, not the individual or those they associate with.

At this juncture I would like to make something very clear. When people such as myself call on the rest of the left to turn up somewhere to oppose the far right on the ground, if you are unwell, disabled, a visible minority, visibly queer, or otherwise vulnerable and especially targetable, we are not talking about you. It can be hard not to take that personally. Mostly because it is the most vulnerable who do the most work, and that is something that, in my opinion, is a disgrace on all of us. We have legions of people who are in far less danger that will not step outside the door, and those who have the most against us acting as pack donkeys carrying the whole left on their backs. While they hide behind you—or us—claiming to be protecting you or us, the reality is they have neither the strength nor the spine to do what needs to be done, because they aren't as personally affected. This needs to be acknowledged, and it needs to stop. How you "protect" your vulnerable comrades is you get off their shoulders, get out from behind them, and fight for them.

Wednesday, I wasn't in Dublin. Only one of my comrades was. Unfortunately, Wednesday would turn out to be the worst affair in the whole thing up there. After having had to endure being in roughly equal numbers with the left on Tuesday, and the embarrassment of Gavin Pepper having to speak out of a speaker bicycle chained to a lorry covered in Palestine Action stickers, they pulled people out of wherever they possibly could. They thronged the place. This is where my journey so far in this article gets to come to its full circle. On the Wednesday, Paul Murphy turned up and received the same level—and worse—of dog's abuse from the same people we got it from on Tuesday, but now much greater in number. The Muslim Sisters of Éire would later in the day be attacked for trying to feed our homeless for us. I would like to break this down a little.

Firstly, on the Paul Murphy incident: Paul Murphy turned up with a small number of supporters. I would like to address this bullet point to the PBP grassroots directly. I have absolutely no authority whatsoever over you, but why were ye not there protecting one of your main men? There should have been fifty of you there. Ye have the numbers by comparison to the rest of us. I absolutely hope it was how he decided to go with just a small number, and it wasn't how ye left him out on a limb. I hope it is how he decided to go more low-key, underestimating the numbers of them, or just not wanting to be an imposition. I do not want to cast aspersions, as largely I have respect for PBP members for being one of the most consistent blocs at protests, which is why I am so taken aback at this.

I have a great deal of respect for Paul Murphy for having not only gone to the protest but, after being abused to the hilt, continuing to vocally support the protest. That takes a great deal of integrity, especially when he has no personal dog in this fight.

Regarding the Muslim Sisters of Éire: It is nothing short of a disgrace that women feeding the homeless in our nation's capital should be abused by thugs whipped up by loyalist collaborators who decided to take over a protest of the people against fuel prices, against the backdrop of monuments to Jim Larkin and Daniel O'Connell nonetheless. This is another reason that the left should have been there in numbers, because if we were, we could have and should have protected them.

On Thursday, after organising with a fellow County Limerick comrade to send food—including scones I was up all night baking—to Foynes, I went up to Dublin again. AIA were making good headway with their shopping-trolley pop-up café, handing out anti-war pamphlets. Some of the other anti-war and neutrality people were there doing their bit. Even the anti-vaxxer with the big placard had anti-war positions on his placard. One of the lads who were giving me abuse on Tuesday actually apologised to me, and an old man fuel protestor knocked out that Zionist shill Roiste on O'Connell Bridge, where Paul Murphy was abused the day before. Via collective efforts, things were starting to turn before they were shut down, and the far right are very, very unhappy about it. They were still on the day abusing us, and I, as a woman who has no children due to gynaecological problems and broader health problems—who had a premature baby who didn't live long years ago and a couple of miscarriages of wanted pregnancies since—got all sorts of abuse about dead babies from some lunatic old Dublin man based on the fact I am a woman and a leftist. So it wasn't all sunshine, rainbows, and unity. But progress was being made recapturing the general public from such lunatics, which is why they were not happy.

Anti Imperialist Action serving tea, coffee & biscuits at the end of O’Connell street Dublin. 

This is where the circle closes. We have, over the course of three years, gone from the rural people feeling the threat of corporate control of our land, being addressed by PBP and Sinn Féin, while protecting them from the young, burgeoning post-Covid far right themselves—to rural people being addressed by Independent Ireland, Sinn Féin, and Aontú at a rally on a platform almost entirely robbed from the republican left (including Sinn Féin), while politely ignoring the more organised, growing far right—to rural people being led by a group of people, some of whom are utterly deplorable (especially Duffy), having been addressed by everyone from Peadar Tóibín to Gavin Pepper formally, and addressed unofficially by everyone from Philip Dwyer to some lunatic swinging off O'Connell Monument shouting about Satanic something or other in the general direction of AIA out feeding people, he with a flag and a Bible in hand. Ignoring Paul Murphy and the Muslim Sisters of Éire being attacked by the far right. This is where we have come in three years. Who the hell knows what we will be facing in another three years? Another year, even?

The Silver Linings

The fact that they were so panicked about the few of us who showed up proves that they are not sure of their footing here. If the left was to show solidarity in numbers and stand firm, they know they would be in trouble, so they have to try to be as disruptive and as intimidating as possible.

The established left is starting to wake up on this. We must counter and hobble the comfort-chasing liberals to ensure the success of resisting the far right's attempts at capturing whole strategic sectors.

This issue is likely to continue, but we currently have a bit of breathing room. If we can organise ourselves properly and cooperate between groups to form a rapid response when inevitably this arises again as the cost of fuel and cost of living continues to rise, or go and talk to those who wanted to keep going until we all got something ourselves and take a bit of initiative.

We actually have the answers and an ideological basis to address their problems. We just need to overcome the propaganda and get out and organise. It is far easier said than done. I understand that. I am not preaching from the pulpit; I am asking people to come out and join in.

The Hurdles

We are out-funded considerably.

The media is absolutely not on our side, nor is the government.

They have the support of the billionaire class.

Our own cannot seem to apply a half-plausible class analysis to it because they are divorced from the sectors affected. They view the whole sector through the lens of the mega-farms and big hauliers. It'd be like trying to claim that everyone who works in retail are the owners of Penneys or Guineys and erasing the existence of the shop assistants. It's infantile, laughable, and only an argument because it upsets the aesthetic left to have to lower themselves to mix with them otherwise. There is class antagonism within the sector—more of it than you see in a lot of sectors. We are failing to organise the working class of those sectors because of essentially intellectual elitism and aesthetics. We spoke to truck drivers at the protest who see their families at most two days a week because they aren't allowed to drive the trucks home anymore and have to sleep in laybys, down lanes, and behind locked-up factories. We spoke to young men working for agricultural contractors whose jobs are threatened by this and who will likely be facing having to go to Australia.

A propaganda war is being waged on us: online by bots, on the streets by fairly desperate rent-a-crowds. I have reports going back a while from the south-east where they are picking up the homeless and mentally ill off the streets of places like Carlow and Waterford, as well as Cork and Dublin, tidying them up, giving them new clothes, and in some cases paying them to fill buses going to wherever needed. I personally have no idea who is funding this, but it needs to be looked into and investigated. Some of the homeless involved were personally known to comrades of mine in the south-east, but all we are getting out of people surrounding them is either denial or conspiracy nonsense about secret societies, and it's not a Dan Brown novel we are living in. I am personally interested in reliable organisational and financial information; anyone who has such can get in touch via rootspartyireland@proton.me.

What, by My Diagnosis, We Need

· An intergroup and interparty forum where we can information-share, skills-share, and make sure events are not conflicting with each other so we can have a strong collective showing at most things.

· To continue to distance ourselves from the liberals in rhetoric and positions. The liberals defining the left is what has gotten us where we are. Our positions should be based in sound theory and actually listening to the communities we aim to represent, not some European liberal think tank and their recommendations filtering through their attached parties and organisations. I am not a Maoist, but Mao was right about mass line, and any organisation, regardless of tendency, should apply it. We need to listen to the working class, but guided by theory. Which theory is up to your tendency in question.

· We need to be contributing to collective funds for legal support and other structural expenses for both actions and strikes. We need to start equipment-sharing as well. We don't have to unite in rhetoric; we don't even necessarily have to be friends, but we no longer have the luxury of not being allies to one another.

· We need to move beyond this thing of griping and trying to rob one or two activists off of each other and burning out the few we have. We need to be recruiting from the public. You can't do that until you get comfortable with talking to people outside the activist bubbles. We are not in competition with each other. We won't be for a good long while. Move out in the field a bit and do your fighting out there.

Closing

This is about reflecting on what we have up to now done wrong. All of us—me, you, basically every activist and every organisation—has gotten at least some of this wrong. Even what I am saying here could be wrong. I tend not to be wrong that often about trends, though. That's the neurodivergency and a bit of possibly divine inspiration or something. I'm not positioning myself as some sort of genius who has all the answers. We have all collectively made the mistakes that led us here, myself included. I have said and done daft things. We have all failed to speak up on various different issues. We have all handled issues, and we have all handled people the wrong way. We are human beings. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good, and try to put the gripes behind us to some degree.

*Disclaimer: This is not to be taken as a call to political violence.