Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Doherty for engaging with me on the amendments, especially the important one where we add the reference to class. It gives context to some of the scenarios which we have seen unfold. I start by expressing my solidarity, love and support to all affected by the attack at Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire last week. Those students will have that attack imprinted on their little minds forever, as will their parents, carers and teaching staff. They should have every support made available to them. Although I was not as young as them when I witnessed my first knife attack, I know the mark it leaves inside one's body and heart. None of them have left my mind since Thursday.

Watching what unfolded afterwards also had a profound impact on my spiritual and even physical self with regard to the historical trauma that lives in my body from seeing those who live on the fringes turn on one another and minority communities. If only they knew they were just as screwed over by the system and more powerless. While we will mostly focus on reaction and response, we should try to understand why and how we got here. In reflecting on this question in recent days, I am, time and time again, struck by the role that those with political influence and power play in creating the conditions that led to the disorder we witnessed last Thursday. Do they accept accountability or do they wish to distract from it by calling for more boots on the ground?

The oppressed will always be asked if they condone violence and if they condone this crime or that crime, yet capitalistic violence, especially that of the last 30 years, imposed by successive formations of the same government parties, has gone unaccounted for. The structural violence this has imposed and the lack of safety it has created in our communities is not inseparable from the lack of safety created by riots. One is just more concentrated in place. Why do we not respond with the same passion and outrage when it comes to the housing, health, education and poverty crises? Other policies which I see as violent and not safe include austerity, children being raised in hotels, direct provision, our drug laws, the State oppression of Travellers, underfunding of mental health, prison, the guards not answering calls from domestic violence victims, treatment of single mothers and austerity policies that cripple them, the referendum in 2004 on citizenship, poverty among our citizens with a disability, failure of those in State care and aftercare, as well as homelessness. When do we take accountability for the lack of safety and violence? It seems to be okay if it is a legitimate form, as legislation.

Violence is violence. Do we condone the State which we create that also creates the conditions where people do not feel safe? Angela Davis once said, "Despite the important gains of antiracist social movements over the last half century, racism hides from view within institutional structures". Although our history is not that of the US, the same is true here. Racism exists in our structures, just as classism always has. If only there was cohesion between the two struggles, we would be a hell of a lot closer to liberation. Let us ask ourselves where and in what structures this State has, since its inception, built division into its very fabric. This conversation goes above and beyond individual acts of racism and violence, which of course must never be tolerated. However, when it comes to movements, there is a clear intersection between class and race, but issues have become individualistic under global capitalism. This leaves a hole for those who hold supremacist views to undermine every community in this country. When they are not focusing on migrants, it will be the LGBT community and women. Each and every time the State fails its citizens, we hand more of our young men over to those malefactors.

This State, in equal collaboration with its citizens, needs to accept and evaluate the historical conditions which motivate the present. Many people do not condone the riots but feel disenfranchised and excluded from living a good life. They may not be on the streets but they are there judging this Government and those before this Government for their failures. They are part of this conversation too.

Some of Foucault's work looks at the objectification of what he calls subject. That is about the person being divided in themselves or divided from others, such as the sane, the insane, the rich, the poor, the criminals and the good boys. These divisions are cemented in policy, structure, and in the language of scumbags and thugs. We must work to understand violence in and of itself. Instead, yesterday, in the Chamber, one Senator said they should be convicted. Who are "they"? Instead of asking why we are here and how we can create a better society, the Senator wants to just jail them. To what end? When has prison ever solved violence?

According to Danielle Sered, the director of Common Justice, a restorative justice programme in New York, there are four core drivers of violence. They are shame, isolation, exposure to violence and an inability to meet one's economic needs. The highly organised far right has fed off all four of those things. Experiencing violence, along with feelings of shame, humiliation, exploitation and oppression, are drivers of violence. We all want to end violence and we all want safety but for some reason, we refuse to look at its causes. The best way to stem the reach and the furthering of the agenda of fascists is by creating a fairer society and equal conditions for all. Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose." Instead, today, I ask this House to consider why people feel that they have nothing to lose.