Easter Rising: Irish Eyes Are On Neoliberalism - a podcast by Laura Flanders

"We declare the right of the people to the ownership of the land and the unfettered control of our destinies.”

Sounds familiar? It's not the US Constitution, it’s the Proclamation signed by Irish rebels 100 years ago this April.

In 1916, a few thousand Irish men and women armed with pikes and poorly working rifles took over the center of Dublin and declared a provisional government.

Their Republic, they said, would guarantee “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland." And they pledged to "pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government which has divided a minority from a majority.”

For a week, armed men and women and kids, with support from local residents, waged an insurrection against British troops. They failed, but the British firebombing of the city, and the sixteen executions that followed, stoked enough anti-English feeling to kick off the process that got Britain booted out of the lion's share of Ireland after seven centuries. The so-called "Easter Rising" in Dublin also sent a message, inspiring anti-imperialists throughout the 20th century, from Gandhi to Lenin to W.E.B. Du Bois, who said, when he heard the rebels called fools, "Would to God some of us had the sense to be fools!"

One hundred years on, the irish may be at it again. Successive no-good governments have cut $30 billion from public spending, shredding the safety net and forcing forty percent of children live into poverty. For each person taking up a job, two people of working age are emigrating, according to the Dublin government's own figures.

In response, activists are reclaiming that 1916 Proclamation. A broad coalition, convened by labor unions mostly, has pledged to pursue a progressive set of rights, to water, jobs, decent work, housing, health, debt justice, education, democratic reform and the national ownership of the nation's resources.

They’re not armed with picks and rifles yet, but they’re already inspiring anti-establishment feeling. The last election left Sinn Fein, the Republican party that dates back to the Rising, the largest opposition party in the South. So what’s next? Who knows. But Irish eyes are worth watching. They’re set on freedom, and not only freedom from the British this time, but from the global neo-liberal empire. Watch out.

(Reporting from Ireland for this commentary and related stories received support from the Pulitzer Center for International Crisis Reporting.)

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