Yesterday’s protest on Kildare Street, Dublin (top) and Helen Murray (above)

Helen Murray writes:

I was at the protest yesterday.I also read the coverage by the media today along with some of the comments on this site. Those, along with the journalists focus on the negative, the expected, the minority, who were there for a bit of sport and recreational combat. And the guards who became the focus of people’s rage instead of directing it at the feet of those those ministers sauntering in and out of the gates behind them.

How they must be laughing today, those boys and girls of Dáil Éireann at the easy manipulation. And away we go again, fighting with each other instead of coming together and finding solutions.
One man spoke yesterday which gave me hope. He spoke of people power, peaceful protest, finding solutions, taking control, asking questions, about not being compliant and of personal sacrifice.
He talked of intelligent collaboration and giving things momentum and time. Do people want change? I don’t know. I was one and there were others like me. How many more?

If we continue to let the media present these protests as ‘republican platforms,’ then we are in bigger trouble then I thought. Don’t let them fool you. There were good peaceful, democratic, hard working people fighting their corner yesterday.

I leave this message not for the trolls but for anyone who attended the protest yesterday, or watched it on the news or heard it on the radio so they might have some hope that the whole country isn’t polluted by cynicism, rudeness, ignorance and apathy, but good things.

Previously: Making A Statement

(Laura Hutton/Photocall ireland)