On Saturday, June 27, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams hosted a forum in San Francisco to address the issue: "A United Ireland, How Do We Get There?" Hundreds packed St. Anne’s Meeting Hall in San Francisco’s Sunset District to participate in a forum to discuss how to unite the still divided island nation of Ireland.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement provided for unification of Ireland by majority vote of the citizens of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the partitioned entities created by the British in the early 1920s. The British government created the Northern Ireland to assure a Unionist majority there. Unionists, also known as Loyalists or Orange, favor British rule and are usually Protestant. Irish nationalists, the majority of the population on the island, are usually Catholic.

As the first speaker in an initial panel, Gerry Adams said the purpose of the forum was “to kickstart yet another chapter in our struggle — the final chapter.” In writing this chapter, Adams said, “There’s a huge role for the Irish Diaspora in the US...This conference is about what you can do. There have been many forms of struggle: armed, electoral and peaceful. The heart of the struggle is our fundamental right to determine our own destiny."

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