Koiné Diàlektos weekly broadcast here

 

MONDAY 31M

Bologna – Strike by the Coopservice university workers, supported by autonomous students and collectives: faculties, study halls, computer labs and reception desks in the central Via Zamboni university street and the surrounding area were picketed and remained shut down for the whole morning. The workers (90% of which participated in the strike) denounced their ridiculous wage of 3-4€ per hour, and later moved in front of the Dean’s Office to make him hear their complain. The latter proposed to meet without media and student presence, at the condition of removing protest banners and informative material on the universities’ entrances: but the workers refused and swore to continue the picket on the next day.

Pisa – Two evictions attempt were prevented in Cisanello and Gagno by tens of people, obtaining a 3 months postponement. After the prefect did not show up last week in front of the families calling for a grassroots plan on housing emergency, which they already did impose on the city council and the territorial commission on evictions, he had to meet the demonstrators and try to broke a solution.

Palermo – 100 people belonging to the unemployed workers movement occupied by surprise the local municipality accounts department office, while other 100 picketed it from the outside to inform the city about their dire conditions. Rome – Protest action by La Sapienza university students at a conference held by the Italian Publishers’ Association in the campus, to raise awareness about the high costs of university textbooks, amounting to an average 500€/term per student, and other issues threatening the right to study and reintroducing a classist approach to education management. Self-managed servers hosting digitalized textbooks are multiplying within the occupied university spaces of the antagonist students in Italy.

Italy – Pickets were called in front of the prisons where Chiara, Mattia, Niccolò and Claudio, the four No TAV activists charged of terrorism, are jailed. Many people came from Val Susa to the Alessandria picket, expressing their solidarity with Mattia and Nicolò. More than a hundred people greeted Claudio in Ferrara, setting up a roadblock on a nearby street that was charged by the riot police after barely half an hour. In Rome fifty people moved beneath the women section of the Rebibbia prison to encourage Chiara. Everywhere speeches and music were made. The four activists’ trial may be postponed to May 22, adding even more days to their imprisonment.

Turin – A group of university students started the “Campus Invaders” campaing for reclaiming spaces and freedom of movement inside the newly-built Luigi Einaudi campus, by occupying its immense lawn and removing signs forbidding it. Among their many other grievances there were the early closure of the university library, the closure of classrooms with no lessons scheduled, no place to eat or have a coffee and socialize and too many surveillance cameras around.

No TAV trial for the events of 2011 June 27 and July 3: many defendants recall their experience of resistance in the Free Republic of Maddalena, the occupied autonomous zone which harbored the people resistance to the installation of the great work’s construction yard. Every moment of June 27 in particular was remembered: the nightly torchlight march, the choice to stay and hold the position, the resistance on the Stalingrad barricade against the bulldozers, the CS gases thrown into the crowd and shot to point blank.

Italy – New AGCOM (Telecommunications’ authority, nominated by the parliament and the government) guidelines were implemented: they envisage the possibility for the Agency to take down any website containing copyrighted material following complaints to be addressed to the selfsame AGCOM through an online form. That set a dangerous precedent, as the procedure is alternative to judiciary review (thus actually enabling the executive power to overtake the judiciary one), and more swift and convenient than it for the copyright owners (mostly big rentier associations and intermediaries).

 

TUESDAY 1A

Bologna – Second day of strike by the Coopservice university workers supported by autonomous student collectives: since 7.30 till 11.30 in the morning, Via Zamboni was picketed again.

Porto Tolle (Rovigo) – After the similar case of the Tirreno Power carbon power plant in Savona, another case of energy mismanagement hits the headlines. ENEL (national electricity provider) former CEOs Tatò and Scaroni were sentenced to three years in jail for environmental disaster and banned for five years from public offices in an early degree sentence. The estimated damages caused by the pollution of the surrounding Po Delta regional park amounted to 3,6 billions euros, and no preventative measures were taken to limit the emissions.

 

WEDNESDAY 2A

Leghorn – The face-off between families on housing emergency belonging to the Ex Caserma committee and speculation interests goes on in Via Giordano Bruno after last Saturday’s demonstration. Following that day, a permanent picket was set up by the occupiers that repelled early attempts of closing off the area; they resisted police eviction of the building by cordoning themselves in front of its entrance and resisting their charges for several times. Even when Casalp (local social housing body) employees managed to wall the entrance, a new day of struggle was called for the next Saturday.

Milan – Two squat eviction attempts in the morning in the Giambellino neighbourhood: the Base di Solidarietà Popolare (occupied last month and now walled) and the Ardita Pizzeria del Popolo (occupied in 2013 and hosting 21 housing projects and a self-managed pizzeria, mechanic and carpenter workshops and a library-bookshop. At 5 am a large number of police agents began the eviction operation, attacking the 30 comrades inside. The latter set up barricades to hindrance the policemen’s progress and prevent them to move up to the higher floors. Some comrades resisted even more by sealing the last one, and when this one was lost as well, two climbed up the roof and stood there. In the end 11 people got charges and 4 were arrested and brought to the police headquarters; both there and at the pizzeria, spontaneous gatherings of the squat supporters took place. Another 500 people march took place at 8 pm; the upcoming Expo 2015 renovations’ role in “gentrifying” and “vitrinize” Milan pretty reveal which the goals of the administration may be.

Turin – Scores of riot policemen with their cars and wagons cordoned off Via Cuneo and evicted an housing squat in the area, home of many families which were joined by many people who came in solidarity and improvised a march across the neighbourhood.

 

THURSDAY 3A

Pisa – A demonstration of workers from the construction sector, featuring over 150 working vehicles, took the streets, to protest the grip of big companies and cooperatives over the sector.

Naples – Local jobs’ centre was occupied in protest over the government’s Jobs Act and as a demonstrative action towards the big national demonstration of April 12 in Rome.

 

FRIDAY 4A

Rome – The “Spazio Tenaglia” Casa Pound branch in the Tuscolano neighbourhood was raided overnight by 20 antifascists from the “Mestizo and Solidal Rome Group”, that destroyed equipment and furniture inside and heavily damaged the structure. The fascist branch was operating under the facade of a cultural and sports association, as other projects ultimately sponsored by Casa Pound do.

Milan – Clara, Niccolò, Francois and Sara, the four arrested comrades of the Ardita Pizzeria squat, were freed during the day. The permanent picket in Piazza Napoli in solidarity with the militants on the roof still goes on.

Cornaredo and Trezzo (Milan) – Third day of Frigoscandia logistics’ workers strike in Cornaredo, in Milan hinterland, organized by the SI Cobas grassroots union. The workers, which are trying to prevent the layoff of 15 of them, blocked the company from 4 to 11 am, in spite of police and carabinieri provocations. In Trezzo, in the same area, a gang of club-armed thugs headed by the president of the Logicservice cooperative company attacked the SLAI COBAS workers’ picket at the LD supermarkets’ logistics warehouse. Also here the workers were protesting the layoffs of 160 of them, and the company failure in relocating them to new jobs. The police on the spot did not intervene, and the workers moved to the headquarters of the Eco di Bergamo and Corriere della Sera dailies to report on the events.

Rome – A hundred of precarious and unemployed workers invaded the national headquarters of the Legacoop, to denounce the role of the cooperatives’ coordination in the exploitation and underpayment of workers.

Palermo – Grave provocation by the DIGOS political police at the Ninni Cassarà foreign-language high school. After they entered the institute at 11am, they questioned teachers about the identities of the leading student figures during the last autumn occupation of the school. Later, they called twenty students for further questioning, charging four of them for violence and public service interruption.

 

SATURDAY 5A

Arquata Scrivia (Alessandria) – Thousands of people moved from Arquata to Radimero, where the TAV third cross construction yard of the COCIV consortium is located, in order to dismantle it and give a strong message in front of the imminent arrival on the place of an excavation machine intended to dig more than 2 millions of square meters of radioactive rock in the process. After meters of fences were torn down, the riot police intervened, blocking the way of the No TAV Third Cross activists, that were attacked with truncheons and CS gases, which landed into a crowd packed also with elderly citizens and children. A 68-years old man was hit in the head, and also a senator of the Five Stars Movement was assaulted. A new day of action is scheduled for April 13 in Pozzolo.

Bologna – After a week of mobilization against exploitation of university Coopservice workers, the protesters moved to disrupt the CGIL trade union local congress that was initially featuring the presence of the organization’s secretary Susanna Camusso. After she forfeited, the Student and Precarious Workers Assembly that led the latest mobilizations still reached the CGIL headquarters in Bologna, denouncing the inanity of the bureaucratic trade unionists in front of the worthless university workers’ salaries of 2,8€ per hour. The mobilization proved the struggle to be a better and viable alternative, with an increase in salaries and the guarantee for the workers to retain their job even after its previously-scheduled termination in July.

Leghorn – The families in struggle reclaim the via Giordano Bruno squat by tearing down the wall set up at the entrance last Wednesday. The demolition of their occupied building by the local administration is scheduled for the next Monday.

Milan – Solidarity march with the evicted Pizzeria squat featuring over 400 people in Giambellino. As the demonstrators arrived beneath the squat, they greeted and welcomed among themselves the two last remaining occupiers, which came down from the roof, and moved to the San Vittore city jail in solidarity with the prisoners and in defiance against the authorities, even if 4 detained squatters were released yesterday. The visit also raised awareness about the detainees’ April nationwide mobilization, launched by their coordination.

Florence – More than a hundred demonstrators from the Housing Struggle Movement and the grassroots unions gathered beneath the local Eataly store. The target was the business model of the retail chain headed by Oscar Farinetti, a big sponsor of the Renzi government which came to success through an unscrupulous combination of commoditization of Italian typical food traditions and an internal precarious jobs and internships system.

 

SUNDAY 6A

Lucca – More than 80 high school and university students and citizens protested the scandalous celebration of Margaret Thatcher held by the local IMT institute with the participation of other neoliberal think-tanks. In spite of this promotion of free-market policies, the IMT does not shun state funding worth more than 6 millions euros, with other 600.000 euros being provided to it by the municipality. Policemen prevented the students from entering the meeting, though the latter already announced further protests against government presence at the local Festival of Voluntary Work scheduled next April 11, 12 and 13.