Heretics: In the footsteps of St Brigid, feat. Clare Daly, Bernadette McAliskey and Lelia Doolan

Raising funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians: What does it take to be branded a heretic? The lines that cannot be crossed change over time and across places, but the methods employed to silence and sideline women’s political resistance are always the same: She’s mad, she’s bad, she’s dangerous to know. Clare Daly, Bernadette McAliskey, and Lelia Doolan have all, in different ways, confronted this problem over their long careers. Each has tackled it in different ways - different times, different places, different strategies - but what can we learn from the common threads? In an era of climate catastrophe, of polarisation, of EU militarisation and ferocious zeal for a state of permanent war, how do we resist, how do we kick away the frame of the accepted and stand firm behind our heresies? On 3 February, 2024, Smock Alley was host to an afternoon of unmanageable notions and opinionated speechifying chaired by Catherine Connolly TD, featuring Clare Daly MEP, Bernadette McAliskey, and Lelia Doolan, along with music from Aoife & Karen Hammond and Rita Fagan, and poetry from Sarah Clancy and Aoibh Johnson, all in celebration of St. Brigid and to raise funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians. 00:00 Introduction by Catherine Connolly 07:04 Music from Aoife and Karen Hammond 16:55 Poetry by Sarah Clancy 25:44 Poetry by Aoibh Johnson 33:41 Speech by Bernadette McAliskey 1:02:05 Speech by Clare Daly 1:23:54 Bernadette McAliskey, Clare Daly and Lelia Doolan in conversation 2:07:01 Songs from Rita Fagan