Eyewitness Report: #YoureFFired, Ireland’s first internet-organised protest movement, moves into the “real world”.
Arriving at five minutes before midday, there was no sign of the planned #YoueFFired assembly outside the Kildare Street entrance to Linster House. But as I looked around, wondering if I’d got it wrong and should have been at Merrion Street, I spotted Morgan C Jones (or @mcj6, to give him his twitter handle) across the road.
© faduda.ie
With him were three or four others, and just as midday passed, they stood in front of the gates. The crowd grew quickly. Within five minutes, the crowd had swelled to about fifty people. Checking the twitterfeed, there were messages of support coming in from others within the #YoureFFired crowd all the best. Some were at work, some were in different parts of Ireland.
Among those spotted in the crowd were Des Bishop and Karl Deeter. Several people had downloaded and printed out YoureFFired PDFs, others had written their own signs.
As several press photographers snapped away, Philip Boucher Hayes interviewed several of the participants. He asked one interesting question: Is this the first ever internet protest to actually put feet on the ground in Ireland?
I couldn’t answer that question, though we agreed that it was the first we could think of. Only time will tell if it is the beginning of a new way of organising, or a quirky experiment.