Venus
Palestinian Peace Tree, and other experiences
interview by Eanna Dowling
"Gothenburg, that's when it really started to get nasty in Europe.
They were shooting at us in the street there. They shot Hans in the
back, he lost a kidney. He was dead actually, they revived him in the
ambulance, a 19 year old boy. They were shooting aimlessly actually.
My friend Phillipe felt a bullet go past his ear and miss him by
milimeters. He didn't even know what the noise was, he said that he
would never forget the noise, but later on he saw some documentary
about Gothenburg and he sees himself on the thing and realises that
someone has slowed down the frame to show a bullet go just past his
head and he's going "THAT'S what the noise was". He could have had
his brains blown out."
– Venus
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BLUE: Would you like to introduce yourself and just say where we
are.
VENUS: My name is Venus, sitting here in the back garden of my house
in Dingle with Frodo my dog. Just one of my last nights here in my
back garden before my house gets done up and I have to move on which
is of course some kind of divine intervention kick starting me on
into the next great thing.
BLUE: A springboard…
VENUS: Springboard to eternity, hurrah, here we go [sarcastically].
Looking at all my radishes which the slugs thought were so delicious
that they tucked in. And my onions and lettuces growing away there.
Everything, all the hard work that went into this garden (moan).
Palestinian Peace Tree
BLUE: We're here in your private space, your home space, but you're
known for going up a tree in Dublin to raise awareness about a
certain issue that meant a lot to you. What happened?
VENUS: I was in Cork, myself and Amanda were at the internet café
and we got word my friend Caoimhe Butterly was inside Yasser
Arafats's compound which was under siege at the time in Ramallah. It
flipped me out. What flipped me out even more was this was an
internet café and inside there were teams of 12 guys playing a
computer game. I think the game might have been called Under Seige,
and it was all these guys in the internet café shooting the holy
living life out of each other. I wanted to go round and slap them all
and just go "God wake up, what are you doing, This is really
happening!" But there was actually no point in doing that so we got
up and we went to Dublin.
We organised this march. We went up, myself
and others, we all went up and arranged this demonstration en route.
We got a statement together and decided we were going to do a hunger
fast for three days because we had to do something to raise
awareness. I wasn't really that into it, it was like, "Ah no, I love
eating, and I can't really afford not to eat, I get so skinny and no,
it's not the right time of year", and so on, but I gave in. It was
OK, like Caoimhe's not having any food so I guess we can't have any
food either.
BLUE: So it was an act of solidarity.
VENUS: It was, it was total solidarity. I just worry because I don’t
do well from not eating. Anyway we went up there. I had just found my
bicycle lock before I left and it was in my bag. So we went to the
American embassy first. I thought right, I'll lock on here
somewhere. There was hardly anybody on the march, I mean there wasn't
even a hundred people on the march.
It was like it was going to
totally go by, no-one's going to know that anybody Irish supports the
Palestinians. I thought "Right I can use my bike lock and lock on
here" and do something for a little bit of media attention. Let them
know we're out here for the Palestinians and the internationals that
are there. I was pretty flipped out about Caoimhe, it was horrible to
know that she could maybe die and the planet needs her so much, it
needs everyone, she's an angel you know. I was looking at the
American Embassy and I thought: "Uhh, I don't want to be connected to
the American Embassy, I can't do it". The press were coming up to me
asking "Are you going to do this lock-on thing or not?" and it's
like, give me a break here, I don't want to connect to the American
Embassy, it doesn't feel right in my soul to do it. Then we marched
down to the Israeli embassy which was just down the road. There were
no railings there, but there was a tree.
And so I thought "Hallo, is
that Israeli property or American or Irish?" I asked the Chief
Inspector whether it was Israeli property or Irish property. I
figured I didn't really want to get tried under Israeli law at that
time. He said, "It's Irish", because you know if it's the American
place you get tried under Federal law and it's like, fuck that! I
gave Frodo to Jenny. I said "Jenny hold Frodo a minute, I'll be back,
I'm just gonna do something here, I'm just going to climb up that
tree and I'll be back in a minute," so I thought, genuinely. I went
over and I said to Natasha "I'm thinking about going up that tree",
and she had the same thought as me she said "Yeah!" She's a brilliant
tree climber unlike myself, I wasn't very good at the time. So I ran
over and jumped up on the wall and then went to climb up the tree. I
was like Oh God, I hate climbing trees, because I'm afraid of falling
more than anything. I started climbing and she's stuck behind me
going "Would ya hurry up!" and I was like "OK" and I climbed up a bit
more and I thought I'm not going up any further right now. So I got
my D-lock [bike lock] out and I put the D lock around my neck and
around the branch and just locked on like that. She went up like a
little squirrel and just ran right up, she's brilliant. Natasha's
just a brilliant tree climber and so we were up there.
Of course
Natasha didn't know that my neck was on this neck lock and she was
like "Why don't you come up here?" and I was like "I can't, really,
in this neck lock!" Anyway as soon as we got up there, the cops made
this circle around the bottom of the tree. There were quite a few
cops down and we both looked at each other and went "I'm not going
down while they're there," and it was like "Me neither." I had just
finished working in a café in town and I didn't have to go back to
work so it was kind of like "I don't have any reason to go back
down." "Yeah, me neither", she said as she didn't have to go to work
for a few days.
"Ok, let's stay here," we decided. And of course we
were on hunger strike as well and it was, oh right, we're on hunger
strike. We were right next to a restaurant, the Israeli embassy is
right next to this posh restaurant which smells so good. The smells
coming out of there were like "eat-me" smells. It was really good
actally because I figured we could eat the essence of the food and
get full with the smell that was carrying the essence of the food,
and with the essence of the food we could fill ourselves. And
Natasha's going "I can't stand it!", and I was the one who didn't
want to do the hunger strike! So we just tried this and we were full
in no time and I never felt again like eating.
BLUE: But when you were up the tree what was going on below, what
did the media do?
VENUS: They gave us a few snip snaps. We got a fair little bit of "Hot
Chicks in Trees" pictures, you know, {laughs} "Squirrel Impersonators
Seen Outside Israeli Embassy." But we did raise awareness and I
managed to shout out a bit of stuff about Caoimhe and why we were
there. RTE [Irish State brodacaster] came by but they refused to
acknowledge that we were there. Except for Gerry Ryan [morning talk
show], we did the Gerry Ryan thing one morning. Actually it was a non
stop press conference being there. The whole six days, I was just
lining them up after a while because Natasha came down one day just
to give Frodo a cuddle and three of the cops grabbed her. She hadn't
even come fully down, they just grabbed her, she was quite far down
the tree. I just ran up and put a D lock around myself but they
grabbed Natasha. But Natasha's such a total squirrel that she
wriggled out of her jacket and ran over and up another tree. Yoh!
Natasha's amazing, she's quite something, she's such a little
springer.
BLUE: Did many people call by to check out what was going on?
VENUS: 24/7 there were people there.
BLUE: That was good.
VENUS: So much. I figured I didn't need to eat because there was all
this love coming the whole time. It was like a heart centre,
somewhere that people could come to, any time of the day or night
there would be somebody there, which would be me obviously. People
were really frustrated about what was going on in Palestine, they
were fucking flipping and so all kinds of people came there, 24/7.
People who did night shifts were coming in the middle of the night or
coming after work at 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning. There were
people bringing food all the time so we had a "Food Not Bombs" thing
going on to redistribute the food. People were going "No, no, if
you're not eating I'm not eating," and I was saying "Please eat the
food, no, let's not waste it, come on". People bringing me top-up for
my phone, which was really kind, people I never met before, I just
met loads of lovely new friends.
BLUE: You were a focus for people's concerns
VENUS: Yeah, yeah great. I just met everyone that was coming and
just kept the truth going out into the media. I was getting phone
calls from Ramallah and from different places in Palestine, and I was
able to just get the truth out on live radio or whatever. You know,
basically, the first victim in any war is the truth, so it was just
so nice to be able to actually just get it in and push it straight
out, because there's so much crap goes out into the media when you've
got just reporters telling the story, reporter… (Laughs)
BLUE: But what was it like afterwards when it was all over? Were
you exhausted, were you spun out?
VENUS: Yeah the day I came down was a really emotional day. The
march came out, they marched from Dublin and they came out to the
tree and they were cheering and that. I don't like public speaking
and I was like "Damn, they're going to want me to speak" and I was
going "NO," and they passed me up the megaphone. I was like "No no no
no, oh shit, I can't have all these people come at the very end and
not say something". They were all clapping. I don't know what I said,
I hate public speaking, but I seem to do a lot of it for someone who
doesn't like it. Yeah, I have to get over it. A load of people came
up from Dingle, that's what did me in, friends that live in the house
came up on the march. When everyone left after the demonstration, it
was lovely, so lovely that.
We did have a lot of trouble with the cops, some of the cops were
really, really, really nasty, like those cops who were in Dublin. I
recognised some of those cops from Dublin who were bashing people
about as being people who were at the tree, but some of them were
really really nice. Luckily the day I was leaving there were two
really nice cops on, I think that that had been organised. There had
been so many complaints about the really nasty cops from people who
were there that we ended up with the nice cops. Chief Inspector
Cumiskey was a really nice Chief Inspector, I think he organised it.
I remember one morning, I think it was 6 o clock in the morning when
the shift was changing, and I was saying to your man "When I'm
finished the hunger strike and I come down from this tree, you and I
are going for a big slap up meal on your overtime."
He looked up and
he said to me "You deserve far more than a slap up meal for what
you're doing." And it was like "Woah dude, you're a cop, that really
touched my heart, that was deep." Anyway Oliver and Antonio were the
two cops who were on at the time and they were giving me big hugs and
everything. I only came down for a little bit and I kept thinking to
myself "I'll know when it is time to go and until then I'm not
going." I thought maybe I'm going to stay there until Caoimhe came
back but thank God that I'm not there now, I'd be freezing and wet
(laughs)
BLUE: Where is she now?
VENUS: She's in Jenin and she's probably still pulling bodies out
from under the rubble or something, helping to keep people safe. I
was going to give her a ring actually.
BLUE: You're in contact with her
VENUS: No no, I'm not, I'm in contact with people who are in contact
with her. I felt really bad coming down actually, guilty. I was just
sitting there with some people who came down from Dingle and we were
having something to eat because I was eating again. We'd done our
five day hunger strike. I just looked around and my bottom lip
started to go and I was going "I want to go home".
Look! A little blue tit! Beautiful! A bird used to come every day. I
never think about the little blue tit that came every day to the
tree, poor tree. It [the tree] was really destroyed, it was so
polluted, it would just snap, it was so fragile from the pollution it
was just black. All the cars that went past beeped, - beep beep beep
beep beep - very noisy, (laughs). I loved it and I would make the
peace sign for everyone that went past and yeah, "Thank you, thank
you thank you" the whole time, I was juggling peace signs. Look at
you, lovely bird. Wow, hello…
Gothenburg
BLUE: I first met you at Uisneach last summer.
VENUS: Yeah I had just come back from Gothenburg
BLUE: Which was a similar activist role, you were drawn there to do
something you cared about.
VENUS: Yeah, globalization, in the street. It had the added
advantage that it was the EU summit and George Bush was going to be
there and it was bound to be blood and guts I suppose. Yeah,
Gothenburg, that's when it really started to get nasty in Europe.
They were shooting at us in the street there. They shot Hans in the
back, he lost a kidney. He was dead actually, they revived him in the
ambulance, a 19 year old boy. They were shooting aimlessly actually.
My friend Phillipe felt a bullet go past his ear and miss him by
milimeters. He didn't even know what the noise was, he said that he
would never forget the noise, but later on he saw some documentary
about Gothenburg and he sees himself on the thing and realises that
someone has slowed down the frame to show a bullet go just past his
head and he's going "THAT'S what the noise was". He could have had
his brains blown out. For the Swedish police to do that as well, it's
just odd, because they're a bit more liberal.
Gothenburg was very
dirty, nasty. George Bush seems to attract bloodshed. The flip side
of that was the most amazing dedicated loving people come together
because they want to see a better world and they know it's possible
and these people coming together with that kind of strength and that
kind of vision in one place is actually extremely beautiful and very
addictive. I'm heading off to another one now in Seville in Spain in
a few weeks. Seville, lots of loving and good visions for the future
and a couple of guys getting together making other decisions. "They
make plans, we make history" {laughs}. Of course another world is
possible, we can't leave it up to a few guys can we? They haven't
done very well so far.
Road trip
BLUE: You were telling me earlier about a plan to go around on a
bicycle.
VENUS: Yeah, vision, For Peace on Earth. The vision is to head off
touring this Frodo Bear Dog behind because he's too old to do all the
running, he'll be 13 in July. To cycle around going to as many
schools as possible doing workshops with the kids on conflict
resolution and peace and sharing the world. Plant a tree in every
school and try and get the local community to come on a sponsored
walk or ride or something. The idea is that we raise money and they
work together as a community to decide what they want to put the
money into, [some project] that comes under the headings of peace,
love, sharing the world, conflict resolution. It might be that they
plant a peace garden because I'm going to get it started by planting
a tree and creating a space, a focus you look at and peace is the
first thing you think of. More than anything being in the tree gave
me that, realising that having a focus for peace is actually what
people need, some kind of symbolic thing. It was called the peace
tree, the Palestinian Peace Tree. I got mail delivered to the
Palestinian Peace Tree, it was cool.
Big Pink Fairy
BLUE: There's a sign I saw when I came into your house. Heart
shaped.
VENUS: That's my banner! My heart banner, "Love Changes Everything",
that's my logo. "Love Changes Everything" on one side and "Love,
Respect and Share The World" on the other. On September 11th, I was
being hauled away at an arms fair in London, in the docklands. I just
found a picture of it today, a sign that said "Fighting for peace is
like fucking for virginity". That was September the 11th and I was
dressed up like a big pink fairy. That's what I do, I dress up like a
big pink fairy. You can probably tell from the house, a big pink
thing going on…
BLUE: So that's what you do, you want to inspire peace and love.
VENUS: I know its possible. People say to me: "That's never going to
happen". But it has as much potential to happen as anything, anything
is possible in the world. It's just as possible for peace on earth to
happen in our time, all it takes is a shift in conciousness. Let's
say there was so much love, and everyone just started to think about
love, I feel you could just change the whole vibration to everyone
thinking about love. You can change the consciousness of the planet.
There's huge potential for it, personally I believe. I was talking
outside Downing Street, and all these people were talking about
anger, fear and hatred and I really felt that at that point, last
September 11th, there was so much potential for peace on Earth, so
many people were focussed on it and so many people were thinking "we
just need peace in the world". I'm sure there was a huge shift in
concsiousness at that time, it woke everybody up, it did, absolutely,
you can shift consciousness. Act Love, Love Changes Everything, Love
makes the garden grow, Love makes the slugs eat it.
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– Eanna Dowling
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Interview conducted with Venus, June 2002 in Dingle, the Western Edge
of Edgy Europe by Eanna Dowling for Blue.
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