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The woman they couldn’t silence – remembering Veronica Guerin

Veronica Guerin was a reporter who refused to stay with a safe, sanitized story. She did not seek out danger but when it was present, she faced it with her notebook in hand. She was brave in the face of brutality and if she was warned to stay away from a story, she dug in even more. But on this day in 1996, that ever present danger caught her. She was 36 years old, a mother, and one of the most captivating investigative journalists in Ireland when a motorcycle pulled up alongside her car while she was stopped at a light. She probably didn’t even take notice of them until they smashed her window and fired several shots directly into her vehicle before they fled the scene. Veronica died before the ambulance arrived. It took less than a minute to kill her body but decades later, her spirit lives on. 

In the early 1990s, Dublin was in the grip of a heroin epidemic that was quietly destroying working-class communities while the powerful looked the other way. Guerin, a reporter for the Sunday Independent, decided that looking away was not an option. She reported on the criminal gangs controlling Ireland’s drug trade at a time when most journalists treated those stories as too dangerous, too murky, or simply too unglamorous to pursue. She knocked on the doors of drug lords. She sat across from men who had ordered destruction and murder and asked them, politely and precisely, to explain themselves. This was not recklessness. It was a considered, principled commitment to the idea that journalism exists to serve the people. She was also, by all accounts, genuinely charming in a way that seemed to disarm people who had every reason to be guarded and hostile toward her and her work. She made this gift work for her most of the time, but ultimately it failed to protect her in the end.

What makes Guerin’s murder even worse is how predictable and preventable it was. She had been warned. She had even been wounded before, when a gunman showed up at her house after she began investigating organized crime and drug dealing in south Dublin. Her home and family were often threatened. She reported all of it and named names to her editors, the Gardaí, her readers, and anyone else who would listen. To their credit, the paper installed a security system and the Gardaí assigned officers to her after she was shot the first time, but she did not agree to these efforts because they hampered her ability to pursue leads and report the stories she was compelled to share. Eventually, the surveillance diminished and everyone began ignoring these threats or even worse, they told her to back off and shut her mouth, repeatedly. This was not something she was willing to do. Veronica was not naive about the risks but she believed her stories were worth it. In interviews just before her death, she acknowledged the threats with a matter-of-factness that reads now as both brave and tragic. She believed the people of Dublin’s devastated communities deserved someone who would speak for them and when no one else would, she raised her own voice.

Veronica Guerin’s assassination sent a shock through Ireland and had lasting consequences that are difficult to overstate. The country had seen plenty of violence but this was different. This was a journalist, a woman, and a mother, who was shot dead in broad daylight on a busy road simply because she had done her job too well. The public response was immediate and furious. Within weeks, the Irish government passed some of the most significant criminal justice legislation in the country’s history, including two acts which gave authorities new powers to seize the assets of criminal organizations. The Criminal Assets Bureau went on to dismantle a lot of the drug empire that ultimately killed Guerin when she refused to stay quiet about it. Ireland did not become a perfect, drug and criminal free country after her death, but it did become a different one, thanks in no small part to Veronica Guerin. 

Guerin’s name is now attached to journalism awards, university programs, and both feature and documentary films. That is right and fitting but legacy has a way of softening the sharp edges of a life, and it would be a disservice to her to let that happen here. The structural conditions that made her vulnerable have not disappeared in the decades since her assassination. Women journalists around the world continue to face targeted harassment, threats, and violence at rates that far exceed their male counterparts, according to UNESCO research published in recent years. Online abuse, coordinated intimidation campaigns, gender-based insults, chauvinistic dismissals, and the slow erosion of institutional support for investigative reporting are on the rise. Journalists face daily threats of harm, similar to the threats that Guerin faced years ago. What she bravely showed us was a refusal to accept that the powerful get to define the terms of their own accountability. She reported on people who believed they were untouchable and she made them vulnerable in print with evidence, publicly. That act, repeated by journalists around the world every day, is one of the few genuine checks we have left on the powerful, and those who undertake this mission need to be protected as the rare jewels they are. 

Today marks another anniversary of her death. In Dublin, people who remember her death may pause for a few thoughts or words about her. People who are too young to remember may encounter her name here and there throughout the day and if they are curious, they may find one of her powerful stories or some information about why she’s still relevant and important. She possessed a focus and determination that her colleagues still struggle to describe without a catch in their voices and a tear in their eyes. Veronica Guerin was a hero and a woman who decided that the truth mattered more than her comfort and safety. She paid the highest possible price for that decision but she was not wrong when she made it. The truth is important and independent media and investigative reporting continue to provide it on every continent, every single day. It may get overshadowed by hateful pundits and manufactured outrage but it still exists. Expect more from your news sources and seek out this type of reporting to drown out the noise of partisan headlines. When you support journalists and investigative reporting,  you honor Veronica Guerin and those like her. That’s critically important in this day and age, especially today.

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You Don’t Get to Be Racist and Irish

Looks like some need this timely reminder from Imelda May today. For the rest of you, please continue to stand up for your neighbors. Donate to those who had to flee in the night. Stand up against bigotry and hate in Ireland, north AND south. Stay safe out there.

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The Peace Flame

Glass enclosed sculpture on black pillar that says the words Peace Flame

Derry is a city that knows what it means to burn.

In August 1969, the Battle of the Bogside transformed the city’s streets into a war zone. Petrol bombs flew through the air. CS gas filled the alleyways. Those three days of violence marked the beginning of a conflict that would claim over 3,500 lives across the North of Ireland. Over the next few years, civil rights activists began a long campaign against the gerrymandering in the region and the discrimination against Catholics. Organizers looked across the ocean for inspiration. They saw the marches in Selma in the United States. They heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak of justice and nonviolent resistance. The movement in Derry borrowed that language deliberately, because it fit. Derry’s Catholics faced discrimination in housing, employment, and voting rights, similar to what African Americans were facing in the US. The parallels were not metaphorical. They were structural and intentional.

On Jan. 30th, 1972 a large civil rights march made its way through Derry. English soldiers opened fire on the unarmed protestors, killing 14 innocent people and injuring many more. The Crown defended the killings adding to the injustice and radicalization of the city. Calls for both violence and peace rose, each shouting louder than the one before. Derry was an open wound, full of trauma, anger, and fear for decades to come.

That history is embedded in the city to this day. It lives in the murals of the Bogside, in the names on memorials and walls, on the gravestones of the city cemetery, and in the hearts of all who call it home. This is why a symbol of peace in the town carries such weight. The Peace Flame is in the center of a purpose-made tiny garden next to the Guildhall. It is housed in a glass enclosure, sheltered from the wind but visible to anyone who passes. A pillar bears the words plainly: Peace Flame. No ambiguity or abstraction, just the thing itself, named loudly and ever present.

It was unveiled on this day in 2013 as part of a five day peace conference. The keynote speaker was Martin Luther King III, the son of the man whose own civil rights movement had inspired Derry activists for nearly fifty years. His presence was not just ceremonial, it was also a full circle moment. The thread that ran from the U.S. civil rights movement to the Bogside in Derry was being acknowledged openly, by someone who carried that legacy in his blood.

The ceremonial lighting featured children from both sides of the divided town. That choice was poignant. While the adults in the crowd carried the memories and the scars, the children could carry the hope for a peaceful future. They will decide the future of the north of Ireland so it was fitting that they were involved in the town’s efforts to promote both the city and the flame as a beacon of peace.

This was the first peace flame in Ireland. It has had to deal with technical issues and multiple vandalism incidents that affect the flame but whether it happens to be lit or not when you walk through the garden, it’s hard to ignore the symbol. Seeing it in the heart of Derry is both heavy and optimistic, much like the town itself.

It also seems like a light that is holding steady even when the future is uncertain and the past refuses to stay quiet. Installing the peace flame did not fix or erase what happened here; instead it shone a light on all the tragedies and pierced through the darkness of the past, lighting the way to a better and shared future in the region. May it shine bright in the hearts of all who pass it by.

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Mutiny at Kildare

(Or that one time when Ireland’s New Police Force Turned on Itself)

In May of 1922, Ireland was trying to be reborn and rebuilt. The ink on the Anglo-Irish Treaty was still drying, the English were slowly shipping their bags north, and a brand-new Irish Free State was trying to figure out how to stand up without falling down. It was, to put it gently, a chaotic time. 

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 ended the Irish War of Independence against England, but it came with strings attached. Some of Ireland would become a Free State, but it would not be a fully independent republic. It would remain within the British Commonwealth. Members of the new Irish Parliament would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown and six counties in the north of Ireland would belong entirely to the English. For some Irish people, these were reasonable compromises. For the revolutionaries who had lived and fought through several uprisings for a united and free Ireland, it was a betrayal of everything they had bled for. The Treaty resulted in a split that not only cut straight through Ireland itself, but also through the hearts of its citizens. On one side you had the new government. On the other there were the anti-Treaty folk, who were loyal only to a completely free Ireland and by May 1922, that split was starting to explode into something bitter and violent. To make matters worse, the new government needed a police force and an army quickly. An Garda Síochána was being assembled from scratch, and its ranks included veterans of the War of Independence and the Easter Rising. Some of these recruits despised the Treaty they were now being asked to defend while others genuinely believed it was a good deal. This fundamental disagreement was irreconcilable and fights broke out often, even though this force was supposed to be unified. It wasn’t good for cohesion or morale and the foundational argument was largely ignored by the powers that be because they needed experienced people and they thought they could persuade even the strongest rebel hearts to fight and work for them. They were wrong.

The departing British troops handed over barracks and armories to the burgeoning Irish police forces and the new Irish army on their way out. These changeovers were widely viewed as the new state reclaiming possession of its own territory but the buildings were old, poorly maintained, and less than ideal. When the gardaí recruits came to the barracks in Kildare, everything seemed to go wrong. It was raining and their bedding was soaking wet. Their quarters were cramped and previously used as stables so it smelled terrible and there was dirt and dung everywhere. This didn’t feel like a grand entrance into a glorious new force. In fact, it felt like an insult to many of them and soon after their arrival, everything came to a head. 

Seven out of eight groups of trainees revolted and seized control of the post. They aligned themselves with the Irish Republican Army and handed out munitions to anti-Treaty forces in the area. They held the barracks for weeks. It was not a planned operation but it was effective. It also indicated something much more unsettling. There was a crack running through the foundation of the state’s armed forces. The mutiny made it clear that the lines between the new police, the National Army, and the Irish Republican Army were not clean and though a conflict between them was inevitable, it would affect everyone, not just those who signed up for it. Many of the people who suddenly found themselves at odds had fought side by side against the English for generations. Some of them were brothers, sisters, cousins, other family members, or the oldest of friends who had spent their entire lives together. But now the Irish “free” state was potentially asking them to point their guns at each other over a Treaty many didn’t agree with, and not everyone could or would do it. 

Eventually the Free State moved to retake the barracks. Their first attempts to regain control failed but gradually (and with the help of Michael Collins) the mutiny was suppressed. This rebellion was rather brief but not insignificant. Mutiny inside your own forces is a very different kind of problem than an enemy at the gates. It raises questions that are hard to answer quickly like who, exactly, the enemy is and how do you deal with your own forces when they oppose you? The new Irish state was reeling and the mutiny was one of the first actions that kicked off the Irish Civil War. It forced the government to make hard choices about loyalty and discipline and despite their efforts to pacify the island, Ireland was torn apart. 

The mutiny at Kildare was a small event, usually overshadowed by the larger battles in the Irish Civil War but sometimes tiny things have a way of carrying the weight of an entire era. This act of defiance led to huge shifts and lasting policy changes. Some would say it’s one of the reasons that the gardaí still predominantly operate without firearms. These men had been too unpredictable and who’s to say that there wouldn’t be more? By the end of the civil war, the idea of a heavily armed and militarized police force was no longer being considered in most of Ireland. If only the entire world had followed suit.

These days the Irish Civil War is often called the forgotten war, which is a strange thing to say about a conflict that shaped Irish politics for the rest of the twentieth century. The party divisions it created have lasted for generations and the decisions they made then still haunt the island today. The conflict asked very difficult questions. How do people who once believed in the same thing, but who are now on opposite sides of it, define loyalty? Where is the line between duty and conscience? How do you cope when atrocities are committed both by and on the people you love? And in the end, how can you ever be expected to forget the unforgettable? These questions did not have satisfactory answers in Ireland in 1922…and over a century later, they still don’t.

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Mary Anne Mamie Cadden

Mary Anne “Mamie” Cadden is one of the more polarizing figures in Irish history. She shines a light on the brutal realities faced by countless women when reproductive choice is not merely restricted but actively criminalized. Her tale also reveals the deep cost of working in the shadows for a society that outwardly condemns your services while quietly depending on them.


Mamie Cadden was born in America but her Irish parents moved their growing family back to County Mayo and raised them on a farm. Mamie loved the farm but did not want to spend her life there so when she got older she sold her portion of the land to get the schooling she needed to become a licensed midwife in 1926. She excelled in her craft but it was her extra curricular services that would both define her legacy and seal her fate. Mamie worked hard, providing full reproductive healthcare for women who had nowhere else to go. She offered maternity care, arranged adoptions and fostering services, but she also helped women with unwanted pregnancies by providing illegal abortions. Women traveled from across Ireland, seeking care that the official medical system could not and would not provide. Cadden built a thriving word of mouth practice that served multitudes of women and she prospered because of it. She dined at the city’s finest restaurants, went out socializing and dancing, drove a bright red car, and lived as though she had every right to this prosperity, because she believed she did. She rejected the shame and secrecy that Catholic Ireland demanded from someone like her, and this loud flamboyance cost her. She was arrested and jailed multiple times. These stints in jail resulted in Cadden losing her license but each time she was released, she carried on. Irish women from all walks of life continued to find their way to her door until 1956.

Everything changed when one of her patients, Helen O’Reilly, died. Multiple deaths had been connected to Cadden but police could never tie them directly to her until Helen passed. Helen’s death could not be swept under the rug (like the others allegedly were) and suddenly, the crucial care Cadden gave became her downfall.

The police made an example out of her and prosecuted her fully. She was the first and only person in Ireland to face capital punishment for a maternal death resulting from an abortion, despite the fact that such deaths occurred regularly before and after her time. The polite society that secretly needed her then publicly shunned her and the papers sensationalized the “backstreet abortionist” as a murderess. “Nurse Cadden” became shorthand for something sinister but that framing obscures what she actually was: a woman filling a void that church and state had created but refused to address.

Mamie Cadden’s death sentence was later commuted to life in prison but that life ended suddenly just a few short years later. She began serving her time in Mountjoy Prison, but was eventually moved to the Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Dublin where she died of a heart attack on this day in 1959.

Cadden’s story is not a cautionary tale about the dangers of abortion. It is evidence of what happens when legal, accessible reproductive healthcare is withheld from women. When we call her a “backstreet abortionist,” we are borrowing the vocabulary of the people who criminalized this care in the first place and it is used here as a historical reference only. In truth, Mamie was a convenient scapegoat for a system that preferred to punish people (mostly women) rather than examine its own structural failures. Women who were facing unwanted pregnancies or dangerous births had almost no legal options at that time (don’t get me started on the laundries) and the official medical system, constrained by law and Catholic doctrine, could not help them. Mamie Cadden could, and she did. In the end, she was neither a demon or an angel. She was a woman who recognized a need, had the skills to meet it, and operated in the gaps left by official medicine. Her story is not really about her own choices; it is about the systems that forbid choices, thereby forcing women into dangerous situations and then criminalizing the people who try to help them.

Contraception was outlawed in Ireland until 1979. Abortion was illegal until 2018 when voters repealed Ireland’s Eighth Amendment and changed reproductive healthcare on the island even more. The services that once made Cadden a criminal are now legal and accessible. That shift did not happen because Irish society woke up one morning with different values. It happened because Irish women had suffered for long enough and would no longer tolerate the silence, travel, and secrecy around this topic. It happened because enough people finally recognized that criminalizing reproductive healthcare creates more harm than it prevents.

Mamie Cadden understood this when she opened her practice 100 years ago and her story should serve as a vital reminder that nothing will ever eliminate the demand for abortion services. She reminds us that laws against abortion only push these services underground, often with tragic consequences. This is especially important to remember in this day and age when women all around the world are actually losing this crucial option. Women need safe abortion care and Mamie Cadden and Helen O’Reilly both remind us that only tragedy follows when that choice is taken away.

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Learn something

One of the most important, beautiful videos I’ve ever seen. Watch it now. It’s St. Paddy’s Day after all. Go learn something.

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Sheelagh Murnaghan

On this day in 1993, the North of Ireland lost a formidable voice. Sheellagh Murnaghan was a tenacious woman who was dedicated to equality in a world that didn’t have much of it. She never let that stop her though and she championed that fight for decades, despite suffering defeats time and time again. Guess it was the hockey player in her that never let her back away from a good fight.

Sheelagh Murnaghan was born in Dublin, but she went to school in Omagh and then studied law at Queen’s University in Belfast. While studying to become a lawyer, she also found the time to join and captain the National Irish Women’s Hockey team. She gave up the sport when she became the region’s first female lawyer and was accepted to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1948. Murnaghan then went into politics. She was one of the first women in Stormont and was the only liberal voice in the chamber at that time. Sheelagh was considered eccentric – she liked cigars and often brought her dog to work. She was a woman, a Catholic, and a liberal in a misogynistic, Sectarian, and conservative climate and she was ferociously dedicated to human rights. Murnaghan introduced legislation to abolish the death penalty and attempted to pass a Northern Bill of Rights at least four times. She also stood for Traveller’s rights, criminalizing discrimination in the workplace, and equal compensation for all, regardless of sex, creed, or political belief. Sheelagh was met with opposition (and probable ridicule) every time she attempted to introduce anything but she did not let that stop her. I’m certain she would have continued her quest if she had been successful in winning another seat once the university’s were abolished in 1969. She stood for election twice more in two different areas, but she lost both times.

Murnaghan was no longer a member of parliament but she still championed equality every day. She sat on several committees, including the Industrial Relations Tribunal, the Belfast Settlement Committee, and the Equal Opportunities Commission. She chaired a tribunal that heard the region’s very first sexual harassment case and her law practice specialized in harassment cases and gender equality from that point on. Murnaghan was not born in the North of Ireland, but it is clear that she devoted her entire career to making it a fairer, more balanced place while others were actively trying to prevent these things. She was absolutely opposed to the violence that erupted in the region and was openly vocal about it, which led to potential peril when her house was bombed by Loyalist paramilitaries in 1970. Luckily, she was not injured or intimidated by this attack and she continued to fight for peace and justice for another twenty-three years.

Sheelagh Murnaghan died on this day in 1993. She did not live to see the North finally adopt many of her ideas, nor did she see the end of the more active conflict in the region, but today, many recognize her as one of the first torchbearers of change and equality in the area. It’s a fitting legacy for a woman who devoted her life to making the world a better place.

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Easter Commemorations

It’s pretty shameful how long it has taken to write another post in this blog. I look back and think, how did I have time to write so much just a few years ago? I haven’t lost my passion for Irish history and I continue to visit every chance I get. I still devour every bit of history and culture that I can and I research and learn things all the time but I don’t seem to write about it as much. The idealism and romanticizing of Ireland that I was certainly guilty of at times has evolved into a more realistic, more moderate, and steadfast love of the country and its history. I don’t write about it much anymore and that’s what makes this morning unusual. I got up to go to the Easter Rising Commemoration here in the San Francisco Bay Area as I’ve done in the past, but instead of heading to the grave of a Fenian who was also a corrupt cop and a horrible racist, I am sitting here in the mood to burn bridges and actually writing again. I guess that’s because I find it hard to believe that in one of the most liberal areas in the entire United States, the annual Easter Rising commemoration honoring Ireland’s Patriot Dead is still at the gravesite of a revolutionary but terrible human, who had nothing in common with the leaders of the Rising except for their love of Ireland.

I’ve written about Thomas Desmond before, after the first time I went to the Bay Area commemoration. Back then I cared about fitting into the San Francisco Irish community somehow and my piece on the city’s awfully corrupt and horrendously racist sheriff was timid. It did speak some truth about the man, but I wrote it without calling out their choice of a hero. The Irish Proclamation espouses equality, socialism, and freedom – ideals that Thomas Desmond certainly did not practice in his every day life so many years and commemorations later I feel like it’s time to find a better option. San Francisco has a long history of Irish Republicanism and surely we can find another, less conservative and less controversial person to visit annually, while remembering the Rising. I know that many Fenian heroes and Republican soldiers are often complicated and not always great examples of the idealism that the Proclamation calls for, but in an area that is known for historically supporting the cause and for giving refuge to many immigrants, including the exiled Irish, there has to be a better option than an anti-immigrant, corrupt cop. In my humble opinion, it’s time to look for one.

Until that time, I’ll wear my Easter lily with pride here in the Bay Area and will continue to commemorate the men and women who fought for Irish freedom by learning and occasionally writing about them. For me, how we honor them and where we honor them matters, so Thomas Desmond’s grave is no longer an option for me. Instead, I’ll enjoy some Irish music at my local, tell everyone there who asks why I’m wearing a lily, and I’ll raise a glass or two to the Boys and Girls of the Old Brigade, who fought for a united and free Ireland so bravely during Easter week in 1916 and beyond.

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Bloody Sunday 50

Derry is a complicated place with a questionable reputation. The city has been called everything in the book from quaint and charming to militant and scary, and the truth is that it is all of these things and more. At once Derry is old, angry, exhausted, resigned, and stagnant but it is also young, vibrant, somewhat progressive, grudgingly forgiving, and ready for change. It’s a place full of whispering ghosts, frustrated wails, clanking flagpoles, and joyful, laughing children. If you’ve ever been there, chances are the city has stayed with you no matter what your impression of it was. It’s easy to be haunted by a city when that city itself is haunted.

Trauma doesn’t only affect those who witness terrible events. It is also the pain and suffering that is passed down from generation to generation, lingering in the shadows even when you think it is finally gone. Sometimes Derry feels like a testament to this kind of generational trauma. You can feel the ache in the very bones of the city, and you can sense the suspicious eyes following you in various parts of town. Dark alleys and dead ends can lead to street violence and rough justice, and there’s an uneasy feeling of lawlessness in the dead of night, thanks to the population’s healthy (and understandable) distrust of authorities. Still, Derry strives to heal and improve. It demands acknowledgment and recourse for the injustices it has faced, but it is also a beacon of cultural change, political compromise, and relative peace. That there could ever be peace where so many tragedies have happened is remarkable in itself and couldn’t be achieved without the city’s unwavering people. ‘Something inside so strong,’ indeed.

One of Derry’s most well-known tragedies is the Bloody Sunday Massacre which happened an unbelievable fifty years ago. On Jan. 30th, 1972 the British Army opened fire on innocent civilians during an anti-internment march. Thirteen men were instantly killed, another died later from his wounds. At least another fifteen people were shot by the soldiers before someone finally put a muzzle on them and made them stop firing. It seems impossible that so much time has passed since that day and yet the excruciating and never-ending search for justice has trudged on forever. The scars from this state-sanctioned mass murder are still everywhere you look in Derry and most have not healed. How do you cope with the loss of friends and family members when generations have been denied their proper recourse or closure? How can you heal from something so brutal without any justice? The short answer is that you don’t and when you visit the city of Derry, you know it. Its lion’s share of tragedy is impossible to ignore.

Bloody Sunday shocked the world to its core and changed the political landscape of this region forever. The level of aggression was something the people were not used to at that time and even though the British Army had said they would be cracking down on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Derry no one expected them to start firing at a march that was mostly peaceful and full of women and children. Ironically, the IRA had recently fractured and was on what arguably could have been its last legs until those shots were fired. Almost before the dust and CS gas settled, money and volunteers from all over the world were pouring into Derry. The nearly empty coffers of every Irish paramilitary organization were suddenly overflowing. With their blatant disregard for life and reckless shooting, the English soldiers guaranteed that they’d receive the same in kind and they did, for decades to come.

The authorities tried to stem the flow of funds and fighters by claiming that all of their innocent victims were bombers, snipers, and other “legitimate” targets. This only infuriated the region and inflamed the world. Thanks to brave photographers and their anonymous helpers, investigative reporters, strong survivors, reliable witnesses, and generations of determined family members, the truth did prevail and the innocent victims were finally recognized as such. However, as their families and descendants know all too well, the truth is not always enough. They still fight for justice, fifty long years later.

Derry’s many terrible tales are often told by those who are most affected by them. When you’re navigating the maze of streets in the Bogside, you’ll probably run into the son of one of the Bloody Sunday victims who takes visitors on a walking tour, reliving and retelling the tale every day. Families of the lost will lead you through a museum that chronicles the tragic deaths of their loved ones so that you better understand the cost of the conflict known as “the Troubles.” Old men and barflies will tell you amazing stories of the people and the area over pints in the pub. These oral histories will break your heart wide open, but they also might fill it again. The city will get under your skin whether you like it or not, but if you’re lucky it’ll also teach you a thing or two about life, love, friendship, struggle, and the incredible solidarity that humans are capable of, even in the face of the worst horrors we could ever inflict on one another.

The legacy of Bloody Sunday is just as complicated as the town itself but that amazing fortitude is a huge and important part of it. That stoic determination is one of the only tools that the families and survivors have to fight back against all the injustices that they continue to face. Please support them if you can. Take their tours, buy their books, learn their stories. Listen to them when they speak. Follow their cases and amplify their voices. Learn about what happened and how to help if you can. You don’t have to be local to Derry either. If you’re trapped in other parts of the world read some history books, or watch some movies and/or documentaries on Bloody Sunday and share that you did (in real life or on social media) leading up to this weekend. There are Sunday masses and remembrance events in the US this weekend in PA, NY, & CA (at least) and there are many more across Europe and the world. Attend one if you can so that the people of Derry know we remember them and that we still honor the survivors and victims of Bloody Sunday, even if fifty years have passed.

One world. One struggle.

*To learn more about current Bloody Sunday commemorations in Derry or to donate to them, please click here.

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Hoorah me boys for freedom

On this day in 1846, the Poet of the Fenians was born in County Westmeath, Ireland. John Keegan Casey was born at the tail end of An Gorta Mor – Ireland’s Great Hunger – so he knew desperation, injustice, and poverty at a very early age. The plight of everyone around him shaped him and ultimately motivated him to use his gift for poetry and song to inspire people to rise up against the English. His voice was heard far and wide and he wrote The Rising of the Moon, one of Ireland’s most popular and enduring “rebel” tunes at the tender age of fifteen.

John Keegan Casey’s words soon spread to all corners of Ireland thanks to The Nation, Ireland’s most popular Nationalist publication. They inspired defiance and rebellion everywhere they were heard. Though he used a nom-de-plume (Leo) while writing for The Nation, his identity was becoming well known anyway. It was further revealed when he chose to publish a book of his collected works, many of which had previously appeared in the publication. Not content to stop with his words, John moved to Dublin shortly after his book was published to put himself squarely in the Fenian movement. He was a prolific Nationalist speaker and a central organizer in Dublin before the Fenian Uprising of 1867.

That uprising failed and John Keegan Casey soon found himself sitting in the notorious Mountjoy prison. The English authorities imprisoned him without trial and clearly hoped that if he was locked away the power of his words would fade. They did not, but John did. He was malnourished and dispirited and his weakened body would trouble him for the rest of his life. He was confined for eight months and one of the conditions of his release was that he would leave Ireland, living in quiet exile in Australia. He opted for living in disguise in Dublin instead. The authorities may have broken his body, but they definitely didn’t break his mind.

Sadly, John Keegan Casey’s failing health meant that he only had a few years left in him. It is thought that he never fully recovered from his stint in Mountjoy and a fall from a cab did him in. He passed away at the young age of twenty-four. Thousands and thousands of mourners turned out to honor the Fenian poet in Dublin and his memorial stone in Glasnevin Cemetery is still visited regularly. It is adorned with nearly every Irish symbol you can imagine, including a wolfhound to symbolize John’s undying loyalty to Ireland. His songs continue to be sung across the island (and the rest of the world) to this day. His life was tragically short, but his words are still going strong over 150 years later.