On the 2-year anniversary of the 8th-Amendment referendum, here is a short thread about the people I met/heard about while canvassing in Kerry. #RepealMemories

An elderly woman who had decided to vote Yes, but her husband was voting No, so she asked me for a handful of badges to wear around the house just to annoy him

An Eastern-European family who were not registered to vote, but who took a stack of leaflets and paraphernalia anyway, to give to their friends and colleagues

A devout church-going man who had been on the fence, but who decided to vote Yes after the priest told a Yes-voting woman that there was no place in Heaven for her

A church-going woman who told her priest (privately) that she was unsure how she should vote, and the priest told her to vote Yes

A group of men of my parents' generation, who told me they were voting Yes without a second's hesitation. "As members of the travelling community", they said, "we feel very strongly about the issue on account of what happened to Ann Lovett"

A father-daughter musical duo who were late for a gig, but stayed and talked to me for 20 minutes, standing in the middle of the road while holding their instruments

When we canvassed in Killarney at Market Cross, we met lots of very kind and curious people. These include:

When the LoveBoth partybus arrived with a very large group of pro-birth activists, a prominent business-owner and "pillar of the community" ran out of his shop, stood next to us and put on a badge, just to shore up our numbers

That same day, a staff member of a nearby business came over and asked for enough badges for every employee in the shop

I was also lucky enough to work with a load of activists and organisers who worked tirelessly to educate and appeal to the people of Kerry. Without these people, there's no way Yes would've won in Kerry

Some of the canvassers were veterans but a lot of us were green and had never done anything like this before. We were stepping quite dramatically outside our comfort zones. But collectively we were strong. Together we #repealedThe8th

All the good intentions in the world won't get us anywhere without someone organising us, so a big Independence-Day salute to @pauladennan, @fionsars and @datbeardyman for leading the charge in Kerry and keeping our spirits up when the campaign started to get a bit too real

One more:
One day someone with an American accent approached us and we regarded her with immediate suspicion, but it turned out she was an honest-to-goodness journalist, who went on to write an excellent op-ed about Together for Yes for CNN! https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/23/europe/ireland-abortion-referendum-american-campaigners-intl/index.html