Senator David Norris
The headlines of history can be written with a small pen. It can blossom from an idea planted here, an opinion disseminated there, a small stand made by an individual against overwhelming odds. I firmly believe each of us has the desire to right each enormous wrong when we find it, inspired by that courage to lead a change.
Each of us has a Rosa Parks within us. Discovering that courage, that sense of fairness, that conviction that it does not have to be always this way, that the bad guys don’t have to win all the time, is a wonderful and liberating thing.
The Presidential Election on October 27 is a chance for every voter to discover that. It is a chance to do the decent thing. It is a chance to elect someone to Áras an Uachtaráin who believes in human rights, who believes in fairness, who believes in bringing the margins back from the edges of society, to represent our core values that are so dearly held by the whole of society, instead of the vested interests who have played the tune to which we danced throughout history.
That is why I am running for president. That is why I dream, and hope and believe that history will be made on October 27th when the highest office in the land passes from the establishment political parties for the first time.
I have a special affection for the University Times and, more importantly, the University in which it circulates. It is from the culture of Trinity College that I have drawn strength for many of my battles. The battles have been against overwhelming odds and I was often told that it was not worth the fight. I was often told that I should shut up and put up with the boundaries set by people on their expressions of culture, or the encumbrances cast upon them because of their sexual orientation. This is not the Trinity way. The culture of Trinity has always been to question, to challenge and to confront.
Our university has set a beacon for change, during its proud history of representation.
For every generation over its five hundred years of history, it has become a symbol of something different. I have had the honour of heading the poll at some of those elections, among an electorate of over 60,000. It gave me honour, but it came with a great responsibility to be true to the values which this university represents – the quest for honour, compassion, fairness and the bravery to take the unpopular stand.
It is the university where great ideas are celebrated and men of action thrive.
There are few institutions as inexorably associated with transition, with great social and political change as Trinity College. It managed to straddle that great bridge in world history between the coloniser and the colonised, a university of Ireland and of the empire at the same time, the university of Robert Emmett and Edward Carson.
It found a place in the affections of the new nation that was created by opponents of much of what it stood for. It provided colonial administrators to the old regime, revolutionaries and the first, seventh and eighth presidents to the new, and all the time is served as a beacon for those who served the status quo and also to those who were sceptical of the consensus, whose eyes were focussed not on the baubles of power but instead on those consigned to the margins of political culture.
Serving all of those contradictions in the senate was a challenge, but a joyful one.
Freedom to stand up for the marginalised was an obligation on behalf of the constituency which I represent. Now I am looking to another constituency, one even more diverse, one with even more contradictions. The challenges will be great. Overcoming them will bring rewards to all of those whose often-hopeless causes I have kept alive. It has honed my mind or the task ahead, should I be so fortunate as to be chosen by the people on October 27th.
The writing of the headlines of history can be done again on October 27th, when our pens will be used in the ballot box. At a time when people’s homes are in danger, it is time to foreclose on the establishment.
To repossess Áras an Uachtaráin.
