People Before Profit are proud to support the Refugees Welcome rally organised by United Against Racism this Thursday, 8th December, at 5.30pm at the Spire on O’Connell St, Dublin.
This is a very important protest given recent events, we cannot allow a small group of far-right agitators to redirect the legitimate anger people feel over the housing crisis onto migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers instead of the Government who caused it. If you can please support the rally and share the event: United Against Racism: Refugees Welcome Rally
There are 166,000 vacant homes in Ireland. There are 11,000 homeless people, 60,000 on the housing list, and many more on insecure HAP tenancies. There are enough vacant homes in the country to house people twice over.
They have allowed corporate landlords to impose astronomical rents in the midst of a cost of living crisis.
Instead of imposing taxes on hoarded land, or indeed compulsory purchase orders on properties that are left vacant for too long, the government has facilitated the speculators and developers who are profiting from the misery of the housing crisis.
And they have utterly failed to build public on public land at the scale that we need.
Their market-driven ideology and policies have created a space for a small group of far-right agitators to attempt to divert people’s anger away from the government, and onto migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
These people do not represent the communities they are attempting to infiltrate. They would happily see a return to the days of the Mother and Baby Homes and the Magdalene Laundries. Nor do they give a damn about workers and the poor – they want to do the job of big business and the ultra-wealthy by blaming refugees for the crises we face.
We cannot allow them to gain as much as a toehold in our communities. We must build a united movement to push back against the politics of hate and put the blame for the crises facing us firmly back where it belongs: On Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and their Green Party prop.