Youth mural combining republican symbols (the Bobby Sands quotation “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” and Easter lilies) with community symbols (such as nearby Tulach Mhór [Tullymore] and The Larks) and social concerns such as the peace/anti-nuclear symbol, the blue-and-pink anti-suicide ribbon, and Banksy’s flower-thrower.
“Over a third of all children, are growing up in poor households. About 185,000 of households are in poverty, representatin about 502,000 people. Over 148,000 of these are children.” This is in contradiction with the aims of both the Proclamation of Éırí Amach Na Cásca, 1916 – “… cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past” – and the Democratic Programme of An Chéad Dáıl, 1919 “… to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as citizens of a free and Gaelic Ireland.” The other images are of Béal Feırste 1969, Léana An Dúın 1972, and Na Staılceanna Ocraıs, 1981.
This looks very much like a Rıstead Ó Murchú creation.
Two boards are added to either end of the many panels of the portraits of victims and the plastic bullet board (State Sponsored Killings) in Beechmount Ave/Ascaıll Ard Na bhFeá.
“At 8:47 pm on Saturday 4th December 1971, a no-warning bomb, planted by British terrorists, exploded on the doorstep of family-run McGurk’s Bar. Fifteen innocent men, women and children perished. Those who were not crushed or slowly asphyxiated by masonry where horrifically burned to death when shattered gas mains burst into flames beneath the rubble. Nearly the same again were dragged from the debris alive. In the aftermath of the atrocity, the British and Unionist Governments, RUC police force and British military disseminated disinformation that the bomb was in-transit and that the civilians guilty by association, if not complicit in this act of terrorism. This is despite a mountain of forensic evidence including a witness statement that saw the bomb being planted and lit before the British terrorists escaped into the night. From the moment the bomb exploded and for 40 years since, the families and friends of those murdered have campaigned constitutionally and with great dignity to clear the names of their lived ones. It is a Campaign for Truth that continues to this day. Join us at themcgurksbarmassacre.com” “
“Springhill–Westrock Massacre. Belfast’s Bloody Sunday. Time for truth! On the 9th July 1972 a team of British Army snipers took up firing positions in Corry’s timber yard overlooking the nationalist Springhill/Westrock estates. Within less than an hour five civilians lay dead and two critically wounded. Among the dead were three teenagers, a father of six and a priest on his way to administer the last rites to the dead and injured. There has never been a proper police investigation, and not one solider has spent a single day in prison in connection with their deaths. The families deserve, and demand the comprehensive facts be told by the British establishment. The truth costs nothing.”
The 1981 hunger strikes – as the culmination of the blanket protest and no-wash or “dirty” protest – are put in parallel with the dirty protest against forced strip searches in Maghaberry prison, involving throwing urine and excrement onto prison landings, as well as not washing or shaving (BBC).
For the “International Day Of Peace – 21st September”, a collage of photographs from both sides of the “peace” line, the Shankill and the Falls. “Peace day – every day”.
Northumberland Street, west Belfast, has its own Visual History page.
Abolitionist mural with quotes from Douglass (“It is easier build strong children than to repair broken adults.”), Abraham Lincoln (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”, Angela Davis (“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”), Muhammad Ali (“Why should I drop bombs on brown people in Vietnam while so-called negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs …”), Steven Biko (“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”), MLK (“I have a dream … black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.””), Bob Marley (“Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race.”), Nelson Mandela (“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”), Paul Robeson “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I made made [sic] my choice. I had no alternative”, and (without attribution) James Connolly (“The worker is the slave capitalist society, the woman [female worker] is the slave of that slave.”) Also portrayed are Harriett Tubman, Barack Obama, Betty Sinclair, Mary Ann McCracken, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Haitian Revolution, Chief Joseph, El Salvador, CoMadres.
“East Tyrone remembers the “Clonoe Martyrs” – four IRA volunteers who were killed by the SAS after attacking Coalisland RUC station with a machine gun mounted on the back of a lorry on February 16th, 1992 as they were switching from the attack vehicles to getaway cars in Clonoe (WP).