Thread by @andrewflood

With #SaveTheCobblestone trending a video of Finbar Furey spontaneously borrowing a guitar to perform Paddy Dear at A Celebration of Traveller Music #5 there is 2016. The Cobblestone was the only one of 15 venues willing to host the CTMs apparently /1

The Cobblestone is one of those bars I like but find too popular, its always crowded with an eclectic mixture of locals, musicians, lefties & tourists who've managed to find a genuine piece of Irish music culture a short walk from the Disney land versions of Temple Bar /2

The @CobblestoneDub back room was the venue for most of the Stoneybatter & Smithfield History project events including this talk by Fergus Whelan on Oliver Bond and the king-killers of Pill Lane. The dissenters of Church Street in 1798 from 2014 /3

Now that remember it was also the source of my 1st takeaway pint when the 3rd lockdown ended. Unlike the frequent at the time South William st chaos Smithfield square was a fairly sedate outdoor drinking location /4

We are see just as with housing that 'the market' / capitalism is disastrous at delivering a city that we can enjoy. It's pursuit of profit means unaffordable rents and the elimination of any space where more can be made turning it into yet another soulless hotel /5

There is a petition here however I'm not convinced that we can petition our way out of the destructive forces imposed on the city by capitalist development. There is - by design - no meaningful democratic control over these processes /6
my.uplift.ie/petitions/save…

As with the cruel housing situation we've become spectators to our own misery, seemingness powerless in a decades long process that is impoverishing our lives. Public opinion has it seems no pressure with the scale of profits & backhanders on offer, it needs something more /7

With housing @CatuIreland are the obvious organising focus that is over time building something but we also need something beyond wailing hereevery time another cultural space becomes a hotel. We need to impose a cost to bad development that makes it less/unprofitable /8

And at this point we also need to organise to demand / seize space for cultural usage. A huge amount has been taken in the last decade, its no longer about preserving a remnant but of building back out whether that's squatting, collective low cost rental etc /9

There is I think a need to popularise and organise the concept that those of us living in Dublin have a 'Right to the City' - that the city is its inhabitants & our need for homes, future & safe sustainable transport and not its commercial interests & their profits. /10

Facebook post from @PosterFishPromo that expands on some of what I’ve mentioned above