RICHARD BOYD BARRETT is a man on a mission.
And that mission is to tell the men and women of the Dáil about what is really going on out in the streets.
To do this, the Dún Laoghaire-based TD showed the chamber how to ‘dab’.
If you’re wondering what that is (don’t worry, you’re not alone), let us give you a quick run through:
Like the macarena and chicken dance before it, dabbing is basically a dance craze and has its roots in the hip-hop scene based around Atlanta in the southern United States.
To get involved all you have to do is lift one arm up to the left at a 45 degree angle and place your head into the crook of the opposite elbow, in an action that Wikipedia says “has been noted to resemble sneezing”.
Demonstrated here by Deputy Boyd Barrett:
While showing a dance move to Messrs and Mmes Kenny, Conveney, Harris and Fitzgerald etc isn’t likely to affect immediate social change – a more serious point was being made.
The gesture came during a discussion on the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill 2016
“We need to start to listen to young people, and the people who work with them, and the people in disadvantaged communities,” Boyd Barrett said.
“One thing I promised some of the young people in my area I’d do in the Dáil because they said: ‘what do you guys do in there? Do you have any idea what’s going on?’
“And they asked me to do something, which is a bit of street language – from the street. When kids are trying to make a positive statement on the street they do a thing called a dab. I don’t if you’ve ever seen it, it’s like that.
*Dabs*
“I don’t know what it means – but we need to learn what it means. Learn what young people are talking about, what matters to them, what they consider positive activity. Support them, resource them and fund them, rather than this misguided nonsense.”
The “misguided nonsense” being referred to by Boyd Barrett was the Misuse of Drugs Bill being discussed, something he went on to say was “absolute rubbish” and “repetition of all the failed policies of the past”.
The legislation has been criticised for targeting drug users, failing to meet commitments in the programme for government and for being a knee-jerk reaction to gangland crime.
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