Critical Analysis

Trump Visit: Report On The Ground From Shannon

What I witnessed in Shannon was a state treating its own citizens like a security threat, all to facilitate the visit of a US President who was in the country to play golf.

Today in Shannon, a major Garda operation with the Garda Dog Unit, Mounted Unit, Public Order Unit and Army APCs with diversions and road closures corralled circa 150 protesters into the green in Dromgeeley. It went peacefully but must be questioned as to why the State is comfortable spending this much money on curtailing the people to suit a visit that most people oppose entirely. As well as why they felt this to be necessary.

At 3:45 pm on September 12th, the peaceful atmosphere of a small protest in Drumgeely was shattered by the sound of heavy engines. Two soldiers, manning a heavy machine gun in an open turret, drove past the protest line in an Irish Defence Forces APC. Three more identical armoured vehicles followed.

On the ground, protesters, many of them elderly, disabled, or young families stood behind metal barricades. We had been warned that this would be a heavily policed event. But the sight of military armoured personnel carriers (APCs) moving through the residential estate, combined with mounted Gardaí, dog units, and roadblocks extending as far as Ennis and Doonbeg, was an unprecedented show of force for a demonstration of this size.

As a rights observer for the Roots Party, I was there to monitor and record. What I witnessed was a state treating its own citizens like a security threat, all to facilitate the visit of a US President who was in the country to play golf.

Before The Protest

I started my time in Shannon off having to get off the bus a fair distance from the protest which I had been warned about by Shannonwatch who I contacted the evening before as the word went around that the Gardai were to make us walk from the town centre, which to those who do not know Shannon may seem reasonable, but is a distance of well over 4km, which considering that a lot of the anti-war movement in the region is made up of elderly people and disabled people, is a lot. This however did not “quite” come to pass as we were left a little closer, some people who arrived in the very early morning got parking closer still.

Damon Wise- Âû at the protest after all his ferrying was done.

Disability Rights Activist, Damon Mathew Wise-Âû from The National Council of People With Disabilities was ferrying people in his car from bus stops and along the roads to the barricades set up across from the flats in Dromgeeley. Still, many connecting estates and alternative routes were cordoned and if not for Damon, it was a bit of a trek. Damon gave me a lift down and we had a very good chat.

Garda in an estate on the way between the bus stop and the protest somewhere around Tullyglass

Gardai diverting traffic in Tullyglass

We arrived at the barricades and the Gardai, Dogs Unit and Mounted Unit were already assembled but at this stage I did not yet want to photograph them until I got my bearings around the general atmosphere. Meanwhile I was receiving reports from a commercial driver in the area that there were roadblocks and diversions on many roads leading to Shannon and Doonbeg up as far as Ennis.

At The Protest

I began photographing the main banners on the barricades.

Some early coverage by other outlets about an hour before the main body of the protest.

The Gardai were stationed across the road with Public Order Reinforcements further up by the Shannon Free Zone sign and the new barbed wire fence at the roundabout where the protests in Shannon usually occur, but people attending the protest were not allowed access to that area.

Some of the Gardaí across the road before I entered the protest barricades.

After taking photos of the signs and banners (There will be a compilation of them at the end of this article) I sought a few interviews and conversations. A fair few declined, understandably due to factionalism and criticism with other contributors to Aontacht with some of the organisations involved however I had some very good conversations besides, and received some short audio interviews.

One lady from a group of ladies from West Cork spoke to me about her disgust for Donald Trump, this is the transcript:

“Me: Would you like to tell us why you are here today protesting against trumps visit?

Aoife from cork: “Hello I am Aoife, I am protesting at Shannon I am a member of The West Cork For Palestine Group, I am here to protest trump being here, and what he stands for and to make my voice known and heard I guess… And yeah, what he stands for I just, I can’t not say anything and I want to be involved.

Me: And would you agree that considering his fairly wide ranging crimes and horrific things that he has said about Palestine and various other peoples and groups do you think that we should be letting him enter ireland at all?

Aoife: No, we shouldnt he should be banned. Hes evil and you know, anything he touches he just destroys and, yeah, well, you know, hes clinically insane like, and he shouldnt be in power and he should be around nobody, he should definitely not be making any decisions about anybody and hes just responsible for so much death and destruction and lies and genocide and all sorts of bad things in the world and that all stems from just being bad and evil, and yeah, the opposite of peace, and I think that yeah, hes disgusting basically.

I also had a very good conversation with a couple who travelled all the way from Sligo to oppose Trump, an Irish woman and an American man who would rather not be identified due to the man's family back in America.

“Me: Would you like to tell me why your protesting trump today?

Woman: Well we are here because we are kind of against everything he says, you know, like really and he's against all of our values so that's why we are here, we drove down from Sligo just to stand here with you guys today because we just felt it was important to show up and we don't like the fact that he is landing in our country

Me: Do you think that considering what he has done, we will say, with regards to for example the illegal invasion of Iran that he should at least be investigated or at least be questioned while he is here seeing as we haven't managed to prevent him from coming here?

Woman: “I don't know if we have jurisdiction to do that but I suppose ultimately we would just prefer he wasn't coming here at all, that's it.

Man: Would you like to hear a perspective from an American, my family are pro trump, so you know.

Me: Thats fair enough, right we are recording, go ahead

Man: I came down with my partner here, I am actually from America, I grew up in the Boston area and America is just not the country I grew up in anymore and part of it, I would say a lot of it is that the current administration and president Trump, hes kinda crapping all over the constitution, hes coming up with laws to continue his raping of democracy over in america, not to mention the global things that hes doing as far as Iran and supporting Netenyahu and whats happening in Palestine and all that stuff and so yeah, I have nothing good to say about him and if it wasnt for my mom i wouldnt go back to that country at all so im here, as my partner said we came down from sligo to support this cause and we hope that it has some traction

Me: And seeing as I have the rare opportunity to speak to an American on this issue, what do you think is the path forward out of this over in America?

Man: That is a good question, I hate to say, but outside of someone taking him out I don't know because he is doing his damndest to try and serve another term after this and he's going to manipulate the voting systems, he's going to manipulate the constitution and it's anybody's guess what's going to happen in the next, you know couple of years and then the next 4 years after that

Me: And what do you make of the $5000 that he has offered for people to vote for the republicans in the midterms?

Man: Ah that's nothing more than just bribery, he's just trying to get as many votes as he can and i know he has already changing the voting system over there they are forcing the postal system to come up with new software that should take years to develop, he wants it done in like, 3 months so he's just doing everything he can to stay in power, and it's all for him and his rich friends you know and the manipulation of the markets that are going on too, everybody is getting rich in his group but none of the friends I have are getting rich you know. According to my mom the economy is still really bad, the cost of groceries, it's expensive to put petrol in your car so yeah, the only ones who are seeing it is him and his friends

Me: Yeah, and what can we, here in Ireland, do for the people in America who are suffering with all of this and the people around the world, basically?

Man: Just be patient and attend these types of protests and just make your voices heard, I think that's about it.”

I also over the course of the day spoke to other people who just wanted to have conversations rather than interviews.

One young professional who was concerned about his job if he was to be identified, I would estimate in his mid 30s drove all the way from Mid Kerry to attend the protest, and it was only the second protest he had attended in his life, he was dismayed at us rolling out the red carpet for someone like Trump.

An Anarchist who resides in the area joined in the conversation, (I spent most of my downtime talking to him later, lovely person) was dejected at the relatively small size of the protest by comparison to similar protests he had attended when he lived abroad.

Meanwhile someone else nearby said that they had heard that there was only a few hundred in Dublin, which I was able to correct because I was in contact with a comrade from Roots who was in Dublin (Her photos will be on the Roots social media) who said it was the largest protest she ever attended in Dublin, corroborated by another male member who also attended, as well as that I had just run into another comrade of mine who paid a flying visit to the Shannon protest on her way home who was just back from Doonbeg, according to her, Doonbeg was much more active and much less policed, so there was a bit of doomerism or possibly bot propaganda going around claiming the protests were not effective in mobilising people and suggesting Trump being hated in Ireland was “fake news”.

There were also several people I spoke to who had travelled all the way from north Galway and Mayo.

From Dublin, the rest can be seen on Roots TikTok and Instagram.

While most of the electoral political support was in Dublin, Solidarity, as well as Sinn Fein in the form of Donna McGettigan and some Sinn Fein members did attend.

Solidarity members set up a table

Donna McGettigan talking to protestors

Around the same time, after doing rounds around the industrial estates the Garda Mounted unit made their return, as numbers had steadily increased to what I would estimate to be something between 150 and 200 however when organisers release their estimates I may stand corrected as I did not do a head count.

2 horses from the Garda Mounted Unit.

This was around the official start time of 1:30pm.

Shortly after Óglaigh na hÉireann made their first appearance.

An army SUV doing patrols around the environs of the protest.

While the Garda Dogs Unit continued their searching of the walks around the banks of the river and other areas of vegetation with a team that appeared to consist of Belgian Malinos and German Shepherds. They were heard more than seen however.

Garda Dogs Unit vehicle with handler about to follow their dog into the riverside vegetation in the background to the left.

At 3:45pm we were surprised by the appearance of two soldiers manning a heavy machine gun in the open turret, driving past the protest line to be followed by 3 more identical vehicles in identical configuration.

Army APCs, likely Mowag Piranha III’s with turret mounted 12.7mm heavy machine guns (likely M2 Browning .50 Calibre.) according to the military enthusiast I asked. I have reached out to Óglaigh na hÉireann for comment but understandably the time to print is too short for them to respond, the exact specifications may change on their clarification, the video as it happened (was not recording in time for the first one that passed) can be seen on Aontacht Media’s social media.

Two soldiers stand looking out of the turret of an APC behind a heavy machine gun.

Meta data from the video just in case I am accused of it being “old footage” or “just a training exercise”. (Like I was the last time I filmed APCs where it was inconvenient for them to be seen)

The soldiers, to their credit, behaved very well and did not interfere with the protest, however to many in the crowd their presence was alarming.

To round out the day, by the end of it we realised after they emerged from the trees behind us, off from the right hand side of the cordon, we had 6 not 4 of the mounted unit out of a total national force of 12.

The 6 members of the Gardaí Mounted Unit

After the protest wound down I stayed until last as I was also there as a rights observer for the Roots Party, as due to our small size and lack of resources we have decided the best thing we can do for the rest of the left is to try to attend protests where heavy handedness is feared, where we can. Especially outside of Dublin as protests outside of Dublin often do not have observers, and to record the particulars and movements to ensure peaceful respect of people’s civil liberties.

It will be interesting to see how the following days protest goes as while I was waiting to go home, the water unit entered Shannon Airport

The Garda Water Unit Entering Shannon Airport, as viewed from the Airport House bus stop.

Reflections On The Day

In spite of the large show of force for a very small number of protestors who were mostly the elderly, students and families along with a few like myself who would be approaching middle age, in spite of that there was an atmosphere unusual for protests at Shannon which can be at times, as we say colloquially a bit hairy: The general atmosphere was that the Gardaí and Irish Army didn’t want to be interfering with us either. They were unusually polite and at times even friendly. As to if this signals a change of objective in protest policing since the change of Garda Commissioner, or more likely, that many of them aren’t happy about us rolling out the red carpet for a criminal either, only time will tell. I would say considering the expenditure we saw yesterday it’s likely the latter.

Considering the fact we were essentially under occupation yesterday and that if any of us even approached Trump’s general direction we likely would have been shot by his secret service, it’s not an easy place to be. What needs to be acknowledged is, that none of this is the behaviour of a sovereign country with a free people.

While things went without incident in Shannon, several people were arrested yesterday in Doonbeg and subjected to a special sitting of Ennis District Court the same evening within hours. When the main airport for the western half of the country is under US occupation and trespassing on a private golf course warrants a special sitting of the district court, are we free?

A lot of the imagery from yesterday outside of Dublin was very much in the shape of the images we grew up with as proof of authoritarianism in other parts of the world that, in their own time were resoundingly criticised by western media when they occurred elsewhere. Will we condemn them when things are now taking similar shape here and elsewhere in the west? Will we have human rights observers from Russia or Iran in 10 years time? It sounds farcical but I didn’t think I would be observing the occupation of county Clare so the most powerful criminal in the world could play Golf 10 years ago. It is all very concerning, the whole direction the US has dragged everywhere within their sphere of influence, especially since 9/11 and has gotten worse since Trump took office, as he ripped the mask off.