A Letter from Ireland
a Chara,
Last week I attended events in New York in the lead-up to Saint Patrick’s Day. I accompanied Senator Conor Murphy to the Celtic Medical Society of New York annual dinner.
Dr. Tom McGinn, in accepting his award, made an inspiring speech on the need to allow doctors to act as healers. In a medical world that focuses on metrics and throughputs, time with patients is needed to see beyond the surface symptoms and to get to know the person, their life, and living conditions. The most appropriate treatments could only be identified by looking at the whole person.
In his contribution, Conor asked what it meant to be Irish with the challenge to look beyond the stereotypes and to understand the experiences of the Irish at home and abroad.
He referenced the life of Dr. Gertrude Kelly. When she was a child, her family was forced into exile following the failed Fenian uprising.
She would grow up to become a teacher and surgeon. Her medical practice focused on the most impoverished and destitute. She was a feminist and the President of the Cumann na mBán, the Irish women’s revolutionary movement dedicated to Irish independence. Her whole life was helping those in need in New York and promoting the cause of Irish Unity, equality, and independence.
The night before I had attended the boisterous Saint Patrick’s celebration of the Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. At the event, they remembered their founder Mike Quill, and his inspiration behind setting up the union: the executed Irish Republican leader James Connolly.
Mike Quill was an IRA volunteer who fought against the British in the Tan War and would go on to fight in the Irish Civil War against the treaty that partitioned Ireland. On the losing side of the Civil War, he emigrated to the US and began working on the subway. At the time workers were divided into small competing guilds that allowed the bosses to dictate terms and conditions.
Quill, reflecting on Connolly, sought to unite the workers into one big union. He connected with other veteran Irish Republicans to organize under the slogan, “United. Invincible”. At the time of his death, the Transport Workers Union had revolutionized the conditions of workers.
Quill would continue to campaign for equality, unity, and justice in the US and Ireland. Following his death, Dr. Martin Luther King said “Mike Quill was a fighter for decent things all his life—Irish independence, labor organization, and racial equality”
The Local 100 is the union of the subway, bus, and ancillary workers. The room was a perfect representation of diverse blue-collar New York. Many in the room were Irish and Irish-American, others were not. All were united in celebrating the contribution that Ireland and Irish leaders had made to their lives.
Both events included Irish dance, music, speakers, and rousing singalongs of rebel songs. These were open, inviting, and inclusive celebrations of Irishness looking to the future with confidence.
At the end of his speech, Senator Murphy concluded that to identify what it means to be Irish is to look below the surface and remember those who were the best of us. To be Irish means “to cherish and share our heritage, to support one another, and above all else to care”
That was true of Gertrude Kelly and Mike Quill and for generations yet to come.
Have a great weekend.
Is mise,
Ciarán
Ciarán Quinn is the Sinn Féin Representative to North America. Each week he writes a letter from Ireland with news and analysis. It is featured in the weekly Friends of Sinn Féin USA Newsletter. Be sure you are subscribed to stay up to date.
