A Tree for Michael D- Thank you Mr. President!

 

A Tree for Michael D- Thank you Mr. President!

 

Today Lucy Kelly and Rachel Huane planted a Rowan Tree in Terryland Forest Park in honour of President Michael D. Higgins' 80th Birthday.

NUI Galway students Lucy and Rachel are members of the Volunteer group of the Galway National Park City working under the auspices of the wonderful champion Lorrraine Tansey of the university's CKI Alive. 

The Irish president is Patron of this great initiative which is about integrating the natural world into the fabric of Galway city. The volunteers decided at their last meeting that it would appropriate that a native tree would be planted in a park that Michael D. Higgins supported when he was Ireland's first Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage. 

In early 1996 local community activists in the Ballinfoile-Terryland area started a campaign to save the land either side of the Terryland River from built development and secure it as a multi-habitat public park for both the leisure needs of the people of Galway and to protect biodiversity. As Minister he publicly backed campaigners and sent experts from his government department to examine the area's wildlife population.

So it is only appropriate that, thanks to the Galway National Park City supporters, Michael D. today secured permanent roots in the soils of the Galway park that he helped become a reality.

 

The Rowan/Mountain Ash (Caorthann in Irish) was chosen as it is associated in Celtic mythology with Female Magic and Life. Our president has been a life long feminist.

 

Thanks to Aengus McMahon for the brilliant photo!

Michael D. Higgins: Helped Restore Ireland’s Navigable Waterways

Over the course of the 20th century, Irish canals became increasingly ignored by the state as rail, road and air took over as the main arteries of transportation. Our canals and inland waterways fell into disuse, were abandoned and largely forgotten. A major achievement whilst Michael D. Higgins was Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht was to reverse this trend and allow Ireland’s inland waterways to become major opportunities for sustainable national and local tourism. He began connecting the waterways with the result that Ireland today has over 1000 kilometres of navigable waterways, providing employment and tourism in localities across the country.

Michael D. Higgins: Campaigner against Apartheid in South Africa

Throughout his tenure as Senator and TD, Michael D Higgins campaigned tirelessly at home and abroad against the oppression of peoples, in defense of human rights and in securing justice for all.

It is notable that whilst most Irish parliamentarians over many decades unashamedly kept their mouths shut on human rights abuses particularly perpetuated by western governments and their allies, Michael D had the courage of his convictions not to allow himself to be coerced into silence. He did not distinguish between torture and coercion committed by the USA, China, Soviet Union or any other regime. Whenever the opportunity arose to defend the downtrodden and stand up to the powerful, he did so.

In recognition of this consistent, effective and proud record, he became the first recipient of the Seán MacBride Peace Prize awarded by the International Peace Bureau in 1992.

His international causes included highlighting abuses in countries such as Chile, Iraq, Western Sahara, Turkey, East Timor and Somalia, some of which he visited and some of which he was expelled from.

During the 1970s and beyond, Michael D was a supporter of the Anti-Apartheid movement as it sought to end the racial oppression of blacks in Southern Africa and introduce democracy.

I was with him in 1981 when we and thousands of others protested outside Lansdowne Road against the decision of the IRFU to tour apartheid South Africa and ignore the call for an international boycott of the regime.

The photo shows Michael D. and my dearly departed good friend and former Students Union colleague Maria O’Malley at a UCG Reunion in 2010 holding a poster that I kept from the late 1970s promoting a boycott of South African produce such as fruits that were being openly sold by Dunnes Store and other Irish retailers.

On February 11th 1990, I along with dozens of other peace activists was lucky enough to be with him in a packed Atlanta Hotel on Dominick Street Galway city, as we watched the release of Nelson Mandela from prison unfold live on television. Michael D and many people in Galway and across Ireland were part of the international people power movement that succeeded in finally forcing Western governments to end their support of the racist South African government.

Michael D was a good friend of Kader Asmal,who was founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid movement, lecturer in law at Trinity College for (1973-1990), and became Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry in South Africa in 1994 in the first post apartheid government.

Since May 2015, I have visited South Africa many times, most recently to Johannesburg this month, primarily in my capacity as a course content creator and master instructor for the wonderful Africa Code Week initiative that is bringing technology skills education and hope to a generation of young Africans across the continent. The leaders of this programme- Claire, Sunil, Julie and Bernard are visionary people that Nelson Mandela would be proud off.

Michael D. Higgins: Life long Campaigner in Struggle to Free Irish Women from Servitude & Discrimination

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In the early 1970s, women were treated in Ireland as second-class citizens by the state and as the servants to men by the Catholic Church.
Married women were barred from working in the Civil Service; divorce and the sale of contraceptives were illegal; women got paid less than men for doing the same job; children’s allowances were paid only to fathers; barring orders did not exist to protect wives from violent husbands; wives could not legally refuse to have sex with their partners; women had no legal rights to a share of the family home.

For young women in education and work, there were even problems trying to obtain bank loans. Unlike their male counterparts, the banks were hesitant about providing loans to female students as it was felt that soon after leaving college, they would get married and lose the ability to repay by becoming house-bound wives with no independent incomes.

Michael D Higgins was at the forefront of all the major campaigns to secure equality for women. He was one of the very few members of the Oireachtas that stood by these issues of women’s rights from the 1970s onwards. As with Noel Browne a few decades previously, he earned the wrath of conservative and religious mainstream society at the time, condemned as someone that wanted to undermine family values. This was particularly evident in the Divorce referendum campaigns of 1980s and 1990s. Yet he never backed down in spite of the verbal and written tirades hurled at him