Title
Honoring the proud history and one hundred year anniversary of the 1913 founding of the freedom fighting civilian militia, known as the "Irish Volunteers."
Body
WHEREAS, The Irish Volunteers was a military organization established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland". The Volunteers included members of the Gaelic League, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin, and, secretly, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Despite their qualms with the United Kingdom, the Irish Volunteers rose to the occasion to challenge the more urgent oppressor with over 90% enlisting in the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions of the British Army. The Volunteers also fought for Irish liberation in the famous 1916 Easter Rising which firmly altered the course of history in favor of those slighted by the thumb of colonialism and imperialism across the globe; and
WHEREAS, Contrary to the pro-British revisionist version of history familiar with most Americans, the Irish Volunteers, later the Irish Republican Army, share a common ideological ancestry as America's founding mothers and fathers, and the civilian militias that rose up to fight against their British oppressors during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812; and
WHEREAS, With the obvious and unforgivable exceptions of British civilian deaths caused by a small few and falsely committed in the name of Irish nationalism, the Irish Volunteers were a nationwide volunteer movement to organize militarily after countless years of failure to achieve Irish Independence through diplomatic means; and
WHEREAS, Home Rule for Ireland dominated formal political debate between the two countries since Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone introduced the first Home Rule Bill in 1886 but freedom and self-governance ...
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