Reading about the emergency accommodation protests in East Wall, an inner-city area on the Northside of Dublin, I thought of my father, arriving at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas in 1975. At the time, he was a lieutenant-commander in the Khmer National Navy, in the US for a military exchange/training program. He brought a small white suitcase, containing everything he needed for what was supposed to be a few months. When Phnom Penh fell that April, he was stranded, a refugee. He was just like those men, single, of "draft age" (xenophobic code, I guess, for "dangerous"). I get it that protestors are angry that they were not consulted. But they should take their protests to Leinster House. There aren't any policymakers in that office block, just ordinary people at their most vulnerable.




<<