VETERAN US civil rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson has called on the Government to make room for a meeting between President Barack Obama and the Traveller community on his trip to Ireland.
He has also called on the Government to recognise Travellers as a distinct ethnic group in a speech yesterday at the launch of an education DVD for Travellers.
“I hope that while he is here, they will make room for him to meet the Travellers because he comes out of a group that faced the Traveller experience,” said Mr Jackson, who acknowledged presidents tend to be placed on the “tourist trail” on State visits.
He said Mr Obama would understand Travellers because he was under attack in the US over his birth and religion.
“They are trying to make him a Traveller. They are trying to marginalise him,” said Mr Jackson, who also advised that Mr Obama visit Northern Ireland.
“I hope he will go to Belfast and Derry because I think the soil of Ireland is in Dublin but the soul is in Belfast and Derry where the great struggles took place . . . President Obama would understand the pain of Derry and the struggles of Belfast and the progress.”
Mr Jackson spoke for more than an hour at the Traveller movement’s Pavee Point headquarters, which appropriately is the old Free Church on North Great Charles Street in Dublin.
In an address, which was part sermon and part political and social critique, Mr Jackson compared Travellers’ fight for equal status in the Republic with the civil rights movement in the US.
He called on the Government to finally recognise Travellers as a distinct ethnic group – a key demand of the Traveller movement for many years. He also emphasised the critical importance of education for minority groups such as Travellers to help them achieve equality. He said Nelson Mandela had outwitted his captors by studying law while in prison, and Martin Luther King had overcome segregation in schooling to graduate from college with a doctorate.
“Traveller parents must pass on their dreams to their children, not despair,” he said, urging the 100-strong audience at the meeting to take their children to school.
The Government announced a 66 per cent cut in Traveller education programmes in the last budget, under which 900 of the 1,200 resource Traveller teachers will be reallocated to other duties by September.
A tenth of travellers who enrol in post-primary education complete it, while just 1 per cent go on to third-level education.
One Traveller resource teacher at the meeting called on parents to encourage their children to stay on at school. “Take this opportunity and grasp it,” he said.
Mr Jackson said Travellers needed to “out will, out determine and outlast” those that did not want them to achieve equality.
“You get your stars from the scars,” he said.