How do ignorant travellers make you feel?

It seems to me that in life is someone does something stupid its there fault and there idiots but if a traveller does something wrong it isnt them its travellers in general. I know thats not true for everyone and its a very complex issue but when it comes to media and those it influences it is.

Anyway im sure like myself everyone here knows some ignorant traveller that throws a bad light on everyone else. How does it make you feel when your painted with the same brush?

Today while I was doing my shopping in town I had too cross the road away from two groups fighting and dragging the hair off one another. I mean really in this day and age!? Theres no real excuse as being a traveller has very little to nothing to do with violence. Our culture is one of music, beauty, crafts and family. Not blood and gritty nails.

I know the media goes to town on it and people dont overly like talkin about it but only by draggin out stupid things like this have we any way of gettin rid of it. Im just blowing off steam as i think some people use being a traveller as an excuse for there terrible behaviour. What does everyone else reckon?

From Pavee Point's Media Monitor: http://pavee.ie/mediamonitor/?cat=771

Strategy to resolve Traveller conflicts unveiled
Author: Joe Cahill
29 Sep: Irish Times

Gardaí cannot play a meaningful role in resolving Traveller conflicts without a fuller awareness of their culture, an interagency meeting was told in Tullamore, yesterday. A new conflict resolution strategy to peacefully end tension and feuding among the midland Traveller community was unveiled during the meeting. The Midland Travellers Conflict and Mediation Initiative will work with a number of community and statutory agencies in Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath. The Department of Justice and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust have allocated funding to hire two mediation facilitators to operate in the region. In recent years, the violence has escalated with man-to-man combat replaced by gang violence, involving guns and other weapons.

Longford Traveller Movement director Julie Mongan said:

Conflict within the community has become more of a problem and is getting a lot more bad publicity. When a feud comes up between two Traveller families within an area it cannot be dealt with by the law using the same approach that they use for conflict within the settled community. This is because Travellers come from a different background, they have a different culture, traditions, belief, they have a different way of life.

She recommended the Garda engage in Traveller culture awareness training. She also suggested the Garda hired more Travellers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think that Julie's recommendations are excellent. The Guards need education about Travellers and more Traveller Gardai are required. How are young Travellers being supported to apply to join the Gardai, by their own Community, familes and by the Garda Commissioner's office?

Thanks for that Longford. Julie is a great woman!

I spent much of today wonderin if iv a bit of internalised anger with the community and myself belonging to it. Not just for its passive denial of who i am in my orientation but all this violence.
After reading that (fiar play by the way) I cant help but ask a few questions:

Do people think that in essence our community is one of violence?
What is it exactly in (ill quote) “a different background, they have a different culture, traditions, belief, they have a different way of life” that makes violence so popular?

As we are from a different culture with our own traditions but most of our way of life have in resent times become that of everyone else. And the majority of travellers have more or less abandond the old ways.

What im really trying to say is that although people come out and say violence is wrong (and it is) what exactly is it about our community that makes it so common?

Because saying “culture” and not explaing anything really about *why* isnt helping people understand or move onto more peaceful ways of managin conflict.

Hi Prince (I'm not sure of the politics of using royal titlage in a republic!),

Julie is one of the most fantastic women I've ever had the privelege to know. She rocks down to her socks.

Your comments about belonging and not belonging are interesting and somewhat dear to me. I'm a member of the so called Irish settled Community by virtue of a fluke of birth - my Da started his days in Glenflesk and my paternal grandfather kicked off from Glengarrif. So I'm what you'd probably call belonging to Munster - if you follow my male lineage. I'll explain my maternal lineage another time.

I am also a member of Australian society as my folks moved there before I was conceived, though I've chosen to live outside it for 17yrs.

There are things about my 'communities' that I don't like. There are things in my family that I haven't liked. I wont go in to the church here and now as there's enough of that elsewhere.

Violence is not cultural. Violence is about power and the abuse thereof. It happens in your community, it happens in mine and it happens in ours, ie Irish society. It's gone on in my family and I'm sure it happens in some Traveller families. No community is immune, including the diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and transexual ones.

See: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1128/1224259619132.html

Violence is part of a variety of responses to conflict. Conflict is not a problem as such, it is the way it is managed (or not) that causes problems.

See: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0929/1224255442767.html

Any Gay Pavees and quaire friends and family gatherings planned for the solstice?

Happy Traveller Focus Week

A Wandering Minstrel

Very well put Minstrel! For if we put aside the sociological triggers and the influences that tolarate such things for sake of security etc there rests a heart of kinship, family, hope and dreams that is shared and commom with every culture.The diffrence rests with how we choose to handle and channel such emotions and events. Violence happens but those that claim it is FOR the community know very little about the living love within it. Il be spending the solstice camping by the Yule fires with friends - yourself?

thanks guys! i guess in a way im battling with this part of my identity. espec as most people leave it at the door of ignorance and violence. that and most travelrs i know culture dsnt go deeper then transit vans and hoopd earings which just errods the title, ya know? espec as being a part of the community is SUPPOSD to be such a important thing. pride. hard to be happy with who i am when most of its gone, irrevelant or just kicd aside by most both sides of the garden wall. findin it hardr due to not feelin acceptd for my sexuality. guess if i want pple to appreciate and respect my cultre i should start doing it myself. lookin beyond the loud ppl to the old words and ways and makin peace with what other ppl claim our lives and culture is about and findn out for myself. guys dnt go anywhere as im sure im not the only ones that need this place. x x