Training for evictions held in secret
JOURNALISTS were last night refused entry to a Take Back the City occupation workshop, organised by housing activists in Dublin city centre.
Organisers requested that those in attendance, including journalists, write down their names, phone numbers and email addresses at a table outside the metal door. Journalists were told that they would not be welcome inside the offices.
Members of the public who turned up for training at Jigsaw community centre, on Belvedere Court, were allowed in, but a spokesman for the group came outside to tell the media why they were not invited to what he described as a ‘practical information session’.
Organisers wanted participants in the workshop to feel more ‘comfortable’, without having media organisations present, said the spokesman Oisín Coulter.
Mr Coulter declined to answer when asked by The Irish Daily Mail about what exactly was involved in the training session last night.
‘I‘m not giving a step by step. It is discussing and giving practical, legal-based, peaceful ways of resisting illegal evictions,’ he said.
‘Obviously we’d be hopeful that anyone who comes tonight gets involved in the movement.
‘We need a mass movement on the streets in order to secure an end to the housing crisis,’ he added.
Mr Coulter said: ‘We are training people in resisting what could quite possibly be, as we saw on North Fredrick Street, quite a violent eviction by private security. We do have already resources in place. Situations have been planned.’
Two participants, who waited in the alley to take part in the training session and wished to be identified simply as Ciara and Joseph, said that they felt ‘compelled’, to come to the training session.
‘We have both just come from work. If you look around at this crowd, it’s not just a bunch of hipsters. This is a movement of our time and we want to be a part of it,’ said Ciara.
Organisers stressed that there would not be any ‘secret guide book’ distributed at the activist training session, nor would any secret Facebook group be set up.
‘It’s very practical information that’s already out there in the public domain,’ said Mr Coulter.