IRSN Comrade Guest Speaker at Sacramento Community College
Mon May 5, 2008
A comrade of the International Republican Socialist Network recently was invited
by Sacramento Los Rios Community College to speak to students and faculty on the
Irish people's history of oppression and struggle. The focus of the speech,
host by the college's cultural diversity department, was on Ireland's history
as a testing site for the tactics of European colonialism and imperialism and
to draw connections between the experience of the Irish people with that of
other people's confronting colonial and imperialist exploitation.
In a 45 minutes thumbnail presentation of nearly 900 years of Irish history,
IRSN comrade Peter Urban drew attention to the origins of settler colonialism,
the Irish experience of chattel slavery in Barbados during the Cromwellian
period, the primitive accummulation of capitol achieved through the Penal Laws
and the Great Hunger, the Jacqueries of agarian secret societies, the
development of Jacobin republicanism, the use of religious sectarianism as an
early experiment in "divide and conquer", through the cultivation of
neo-colonial oppression and the use of "peace negotiations" to undermine the
revolutionary struggle. In addition, the presentation touched on notable
experiences within the Irish diaspora, including the role of Bernard O'Higgins
in the first wave of Bolivarian revolution in South America, the reality of the
San Patricios and of the Molly McGuires, the participation of the Connolly
Column in the Spanish Civil War, up to the participation of INLA volunteers in
PFLP training camps and alongside the MPLA in Angola.
An honorarium provided by the college will be donated to the legal defense fund
of the Cork Five--five leading members of the Irish Republican Socialist
Movement arrested on charges of INLA membership and tortured by the Free State
government.
A comrade of the International Republican Socialist Network recently was invited
by Sacramento Los Rios Community College to speak to students and faculty on the
Irish people's history of oppression and struggle. The focus of the speech,
host by the college's cultural diversity department, was on Ireland's history
as a testing site for the tactics of European colonialism and imperialism and
to draw connections between the experience of the Irish people with that of
other people's confronting colonial and imperialist exploitation.
In a 45 minutes thumbnail presentation of nearly 900 years of Irish history,
IRSN comrade Peter Urban drew attention to the origins of settler colonialism,
the Irish experience of chattel slavery in Barbados during the Cromwellian
period, the primitive accummulation of capitol achieved through the Penal Laws
and the Great Hunger, the Jacqueries of agarian secret societies, the
development of Jacobin republicanism, the use of religious sectarianism as an
early experiment in "divide and conquer", through the cultivation of
neo-colonial oppression and the use of "peace negotiations" to undermine the
revolutionary struggle. In addition, the presentation touched on notable
experiences within the Irish diaspora, including the role of Bernard O'Higgins
in the first wave of Bolivarian revolution in South America, the reality of the
San Patricios and of the Molly McGuires, the participation of the Connolly
Column in the Spanish Civil War, up to the participation of INLA volunteers in
PFLP training camps and alongside the MPLA in Angola.
An honorarium provided by the college will be donated to the legal defense fund
of the Cork Five--five leading members of the Irish Republican Socialist
Movement arrested on charges of INLA membership and tortured by the Free State
government.