red mum

HERE’S some pics from the Big Bra protest in support of cancer services in Sligo Hospital from Tuesday. You can find out more about the campaign on their website.

(July 28th)

I’M GOING to cross post something I wrote (with some minor tweaking) after this week’s vigils in the Facebook campaign group .

————————————————————————————————–

The vigils during the week were great. Like any other event like this, when I went to set up at the Dáil I was nervous and anxious thinking ‘please let people show up’ and you did

Both Cork and Dublin’s events had about 60 people attending and considering the evening that was in it, a wet, cold, very cold evening, that was great.

According to Sorcha Daly (who organised the Cork event) the speakers were great and Ger Murphy who lost her daughter Evelyn last year to the disease was particularly powerful.

In Dublin we had deputies Jan O’Sullivan and James Reilly who spoke, unfortunately Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin was unable to make it out in time as he was due to speak on the Health Bill in the Dail and couldn’t leave the House. He did make it out at the end having run out trying to catch the end of the vigil. We had many other TDs out at the vigil and I would be afraid to name them in case I would miss out on some, but their presence was fantastic.

What was also brilliant in Dublin was that some of the attendees came because they received an email about the event and one couple came because they heard about it from a friend via text. So well done that was brilliant. We are getting our message out using all sorts of methods.

I think that an important aspect to the group where people can participate on a level that suits them whether thats by attending demonstrations or by emailing or contacting family and friends on the issue. Everything has its place and all of it counts.

The vigils got fantastic news coverage; Newstalk, Cork’s 96fm, the Sun, the Examiner, the Mirror, the Star and a brilliant spread in the Daily Mail (who have been running a campaign also calling for the vaccine) including the front page which featured Evelyn Cotter who died from cervical cancer last year.

We do understand that not everyone can make it to events like this which makes the online campaigning side of this issue very important so your emails to your Government TDs are vital, we need to consistently let them know that we are not happy with this decision and we want it reversed.

I also want to thank Sorcha Daly for taking the lead and organising a dual event in Cork, that was fantastic. And fair play to her for all the work. It is hard doing these things by yourself, with a budget of nothing. So for the group to pull off two great events was fantastic. Well done and thanks.

We will be doing more. I am going to draft a couple of standard letters to the editor which people can adapt and send to their local papers about the issue and after Christmas we’ll work on another action.

I have found the nonsense moral undertones surfacing around this hilarious to say the least. One person who has bombarded the Facebook group with nonsense comments as well as my Flickr account even went so far as to phone my work to complain about me. The person she got through to put her onto me (thanks) and she gave out yards about god knows what before saying ‘I bet you have shares in the vaccine company’ to which I replied ‘yes thats right’.

Whatever about not agreeing with the campaign and whatever about not agreeing with vaccines, people are free to believe what they want. But as it stands no one has a choice about this campaign and if the vaccine was implemented they would have a choice NOT to have their daughters vaccinated and we would have the cjhoice to have it. Being insulting, rude and aggressive to a stranger because you don’t agree with them will get you nowhere and certainly will gain no respect from me.

You can see pics from the event on Dec‘s Flickr photostream, it was odd to be at a demo and not taking pics, I don’t think people would have been impressed with me interrupting introductions of speakers to say ‘hang on till I get a pic I was delighted to briefly meet Neil Dorgan and I look forward to his shots as well.

So thats it for now but more things are planned, so if you haven’t joined the Facebook group yet, please do, we are nearly 11,000 members strong.

Defend Women’s Health Rally:

Save Cervical Cancer Services for Girls and Women.

Saturday, 15th November (this Saturday) at the Spire, O’Connell Street at 2pm

Join the Facebook group

SABRINA, who made all the cool badges for the different events around Irish Blog Awards week, has just launched Two Tits and a Vote, a website intended to help Irish women become politically active around the issues that affect them.

The site offers a range of ways that you can make a difference, sign the petition for one.

View it large here.

Explaining the site Sabrina says: “”Women make up more than 50% of the Irish population, but as a group, we’re not particularly politically active, nor are women or our issues well represented in government. Of the current lot of TDs, only 12% are women. Because we’re not vocal enough as voters, we’re not regularly demanding attention where we want it to be focused.”

“The site has launched with “Better Access to Breast Health Care, Now” as its first campaigning issue. Highlighting service withdrawal from hospitals, excessive waiting times and Dail debate on the issue, Two Tits and a Vote enables women to send real world letters, postcards and petition signatures from the website.

“Women today face unprecedented demands on their time,” noted Sabrina Dent, the campaign’s creator. “Women care passionately about the healthcare issues that affect ourselves, our friends and our families, but to channel that passion into action, many of us need streamlined mechanisms that will put our views in front of politicians without taking up vast amounts of time we don’t have.”

Sabrina also talks about Alison who had to wait for a scan on her breast after having some problems. This post condenses the awful treatment given to Alison before Christmas.

Alison says on her own blog: “My heartfelt thanks to Sabrina for highlighting my issue. It is my sincere hope that more women will come out of the woodwork and people will know what is really going on and how ridiculous it really is.”

A petition is also planned to be delivered to Mary Harney just in time for International Womens’ Day so get over to the site and see what you can do.

You can also check out some of the press coverage the site has received today, the Indo and the Mirror.

Trocaire is doing an amazing Lenten campaign this year, one when I heard I thought ‘wow thats great’. Then I heard it had been taken off the air by the Broadcast Commission of Ireland (BCI).

Have a look and try to work out why.

The BCI took this ad off because the ad contains their website which has a page with an online petition that Trócaire is running as part of its Lenten campaign.

The petition urges the Irish government to implement UN resolution 1325 relating to gender inequality and specifically the protection of women in times of conflict.

“The BCI appears to believe that because our website address is in the ad we are directing people to take a political action. However, our website address is in the ad so that people can donate online or order a Trócaire box and this is specified in the wording,” Trocaire says on it’s website.

Trocaire is appealing this decision.

So for International Women’s Day (March 8th) you could sign the petition on gender equality at the core of all this nonsense which you can find here.

You can read more thoughts on the dreadful decision by the BCI on Irisheyes and Ask Direct.

Trocaire is also launching an online community where people can blog about social injustice. You can check it out here.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Trocaire International Womens Day Trocaire Lenten Campaign BCI