Placing the pence into the young girls small pale hand I couln't help reflect how much she looked like my sister some odd years ago. I was not accustomed to giving out charity to people that looked like myself and this hand rattled my cage. For the first time in my life I realized that my people were at war that they were being victimized and that I could no longer turn away and pretend that everything would be okay. Looking out on the ghetto of West Belfast with it's people that looked like an photo in my family album I began to question the reality being depicted in the media back home. I also realized that we could no longer seperate the struggle of people in Harlem from the people of West Belfast and of Palestine. It had truly become an international awakening for myself.
So ten years later I found myself, after much work on international issues, sitting down with Peter Urban one of the North American Co-ordinators for the Irish Socialist Movement which is the "conduit" for the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and it's political entity the Irish Socialist Republican Party (IRSP)( http://www.irsm.org).
In this series of interviews I shall be presenting the convesation I had with Peter Urban regarding state repression, civil rights, the use of force and non-violence, the anti-capitalist movement, solidarity, and the "peace" process in the north of Ireland.
In this introductory piece he discusses the history of Irish socialism, the founding of the IRA, the connection of Irish socialism with the anarcho-syndicalist tradition of the Industrial Workers of the World.

THE NEW FIGHT, part I: Background of Irish Socialism

a. is there an audio/video meeting tonight?

 http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=774