As
the British must have noted with glee, Gerry Adams
can’t unsay what he has said. Now the Provisional
movement is forced to consider the two options given
them while the public waits, and equally so, the
Irish American community --on whose back Adams became
a fundraising superstar-- has to justify its fair-weather
activism.
As
the largest of organizations in the community, and
thus the one on who the onus of leadership by exposure
is lain, Irish Northern Aid has staved off this
demand for reflection by aping Sinn Fein rhetoric
and dismissing all dissention with blind aggression.
Their
allegiance to Sinn Fein through that party’s
surrender of three key Irish Republican positions
destroyed what great efforts that organization had
accomplished through the preceding decades. This
self-absolution criminalized Irish Republicanism,
removed Ireland’s constitutional and historic
claim of the island, and allowed for a new Stormont
Authority which Sinn Fein had specifically condemned
in 1973.
Throw
in the deafening silence concerning the mafia tactics
of the Provisional IRA against members of the Irish
nationalist communities, the Northern Bank heist,
and the killings of fellow Irish Republicans and,
I believe, one would be hard pressed to accept the
legitimacy of NORAID‘s continued mission.
So
uninspired have the communities here fallen that
it is not unusual to hear Irish Republicanism denigrated
to having a Red State- Blue State US electoral context.
This is too great a failure to go unheeded. The
apathetic nature of activism in our communities
have reached a new low, ignoring and insulting the
historical importance of our past.
The
ties between Ireland and the US are profound. We
are cousins, brothers, sisters, family. We have
here the graves of thousands of Irish Patriots who
owned little more than the knowledge of their homeland
deprived of them. From Wolfe Tone’s wife to
the rescued Fenians of the Catalpa, we are as responsible
to their sacrifices as we are to our own.
The
fear exhibited by members of Irish Northern Aid
when confronting these issues is often exacerbated
by their inability to rationalize the enthusiasm
of their support for the Provisionals of the 1980’s
versus Sinn Fein’s participation in a British
Administration. That
contradictions so blatantly obvious can remain unchecked
is a wound growing with infection.
This
past Saturday, April 16, the Irish Freedom Committee
hosted a multi-band concert on Chicago’s far
Southside. This event is an effort to raise awareness
of the status and inhumane treatment of over one
hundred Irish Republican Prisoners currently incarcerated.
For more information please see the events page
at www.IrishFreedomCommittee.net
