Erri De Luca

 

MONDAY 10F

Rome – A great assembly was held at La Sapienza University, partaken in by all the big struggling movements in Italy: the housing rights committees, the no tav, the granarolo loaders, the no muos, grassroots trade unions, student collectives, social centres and many others. Later during this week our website will publish the final statement of the meeting.

Parma – During the last weekend, scores of antifascists cordoned off a nostalgic torchlight march by the neofascist Casa Pound group from the city centre. The fascist demonstration numbered few people from the whole region of Emilia Romagna and was protected by more than 50 cops: it took place on an institutional day of remembrance Italian victims of the Jugoslavian army during WW2, a despicable pretext to remove the fascist colonial and genocidal responsibilities in that context. The counter-demonstration ended with a picket in the city centre.

Palermo – During the night, scores of citizens and small businessmen destroyed and tore down the walls built to seal the battered Piazza Garraffello in a genuine outbreak of popular rage against the mayor Orlando. As soon as police was chased away, pelted by eggs and firecrackers, a hundred people joined the assembly called up by the PrendoCasa Committee to demand housing projects to be realized in the rebuilt buildings of the square. Early in the morning, a group of homeless people occupied the municipal office for social activities to prevent eviction from the hotel in which they have been dwelling for 4 years.

Massa – Fifty antifascist clash with the police protecting fascist Forza Nuova and Casa Pound groups, in spite of the recent aggressions made by members of the latter in the Tuscanian city centre.

 

TUESDAY 11F

Naples – Student and precarious workers protested beneath the Il Mattino daily headquarters to denounce media silence and institutional repression against the nearby Giugliano city dwellers. A social revolt erupted in Giugliano last January against the TARES garbage tax, in a territory already plagued by criminal, institutional and corporate mismanagement and dump of toxic waste.

Bergamo – The city council (Forza Italia – Berlusconi’s party – and xenophobic Northern League majority) voted in favour of evicting and auctioning the Cascina Ponchio, a municipal-property farmhouse occupied by the Autonomous Popular collective since two months. The pretext was to raising money in order to provide maintenance for housing projects, yet all of this happens with the latter left uncared-for in the previous five years and as local elections draw near.

Bari – The overcrowding of the local migrant care center and the eviction in january of the Villa Roth social centre – that sheltered some of them – made fifty migrants and evicted people in Bari occupy the former, abandoned, Casa del Rifugiato (Refugee’s House), in the port area.

Rome – The Court of Appeal acquits one activist that participated in the October 15 2011 Indignados’ protest in Rome from all criminal charges (after him having passed more than two years under house arrests) and basically confirms the accusations for four others, and the hideous charge of devastation and pillaging (a remnant from fascist penal code) in particular. After almost a year in jail, one of them is put under house arrests.

Val Susa – OUTSTANDING! Thanks to an enormous local, national and international effort enough money was raised in the last month to make up for the outrageous reparation request issued by the civil court of Turin in favour of the LTF company, and against the No Tav movement. Even a bank transfer can become an act of resistance, and it will be increasingly hard from now on for the enemies of the movement to have their way! 

 

WEDNESDAY 12F

Turin – Early in the morning scores of police wagons surrounded and then evicted the occupied former public baths in via Conte di Roccavione. As people in the area fraternized with the occupiers, the centre-left city council tries to show its iron fist, scared of the growing self-organization of homeless and evicted people. Another surprise eviction was carried out in the San Salvario neighbourhood on the previous day.

Bologna – The permanent picket moved from the gates of Granarolo dairy company to the Bologna interport to keep its pressure on the logistics’ group Cogefrin – which still refuses to join the conditions of reinstatement of the 9-months struggling loaders agreed upon by the grassroots SI COBAS union, the prefect and Granarolo itself.

Bentivoglio (Bologna) – Roberto ‘Freak’ Antoni, the iconic leader of the Skiantos Bolognese punk-rock band, a flagship of the Italian underground culture, dies at 59.

Palermo – A huge mobilization of show business precarious workers, artists and citizens prevented the eviction of the Teatro Mediterraneo Occupato – an autonomous occupied arts’ space in the deserted Mediterranean Fair compound – and forced the mayor Orlando to start negotiating a solution for the requalification of the area. Various theatre readings, concerts and performances were played during the day.

Pisa – More than 70 people from the Prendocasa Pisa housing struggle collective and people from the Sant’Ermete and Gagno neighbourhoods prevented the eviction of a familiy in Cisanello and denounce real estate speculation in the area.

 

THURSDAY 13F

Italy – A criminal conspiracy charge is issued against housing rights activists in Rome (7 house arrests, 10 daily requirements to sign-in) and unemployed workers in Naples (10 house arrests, 15 prohibitions to leave the city). The answer from the Italian cities is massive. Five hundred people in Bologna block the city centre for two hours, several hundreds in Milan reach the prefecture and join there with the picket of logistics’ workers. Hundreds of people and political collectives’ activists gather under the prefectures of Palermo, Turin, Modena and Pisa as well. In Rome after a press conference in Porta Pia, a huge march of 10.000 people moves towards the local prefecture as well, to demand freedom for the arrested.

Val Susa – A carabinieri paramilitary police officer is embarassed as, during a middle school speech, he is engaged by a 11-year old girl, berating his colleagues for using illegal CS gas and beating people from the Valley during demonstrations.

Palermo – The roof of a primary school collapses, injuring three pupils. Meanwhile, the eviction attempt of the house of an elderly woman is prevented by the local Prendocasa collective.

Calvi Risorta (Caserta) – As many stocks of toxic material, dumped in warehouses in the Ex-Pozzi area, get seized by the national finance police, the Agro Caleno Committee denounces the collusion and the responsibilities of local political parties, institutions and police forces in the waste mismanagement and pollution of the territory.

Pisa – People start to organize themselves to face the crisis in the Gagno neighbourhood. A popular assembly started to discuss the many problems of the area, as the dilapidated condition of many buildings, the housing emergency and the lack of community spaces.

 

FRIDAY 14F

Milan – Delegates representing minority “il sindacato è un’altra cosa (the trade union is a different thing)” motion are prevented to enter a CGIL trade union assembly and threatened and assaulted by the security.

Val Susa – A No Tav people’s assembly revamps the upcoming February 22 nationwide demonstration in solidarity with the movement and against the devastation of the territories; solidarity is expressed to the detainees in Rome and Naples, and renewed to the movement’s own prisoners as the exceeding funds raised after having paid the LTF reparation request will cover legal and transport expenses of their families.

 

SATURDAY 15F

Bologna – National convention on public spending organized by the network of grassroots movements that participated in the 2013 October 19 demonstration, to discuss its flaws and repressive uses.

Rome – 5000 people crying “Freedom, Hurriya, Libertà!” siege the CIE (Centro di Identificazione ed Espulsione, a kind of migrant detention centre) of Ponte Galeria in the capitol. In spite of the police blockade (local transport has been slowed down in an effort to hindrace the demonstration) and tear gas, the facility’s fences are attacked and tore down with ropes and firecrackers. Meanwhile, a solidarity op from Anonymous Italia brings down the Ministry of Justice website.

Messina – The Unime Student Collective and former Teatro Pinelli Occupato squat members occupy a municipally-owned building in order to prevent the installation of a court there and to provide a student house for local university students.

Modena – The city prefect confirms a fine of 2500€ against 10 activists that in 2012 picketed the highway during a 10000 people demonstration in defense of workers’ rights.

Ferrara – Demonstration in the city downtown to remember Federico Aldrovandi, a 18 years-old youth brutally murdered by police officers. Starting from the spot of the assassination, 5000 people (family, friends, ultras, other families of victims of police abuses) marched towards the prefecture, calling for expulsion from the police of the four culprits (which, after having being pardoned, resumed their work in the nearby Veneto region), against police abuses and for introducing the crime of Torture in the penal law.

 

SUNDAY 16F

Italy – Further cuts of the wages of the flagship Alitalia airline personnel by the management. As 1900 layoffs loom, the CUB grassroots union calls for a strike on February 21.

Florence – A 200 people march demonstrate in the Rifredi neighbourhood in solidarity with the arrested comrades in Rome and Naples, and against soaring rents and high cost of living.

Viareggio (Lucca) – A manif sauvage demonstration of citizens and housing rights committees tears down the walled entrances of vacant housing projects and reclaims their immediate assignment to needy families; the demonstration expresses solidarity with the arrested comrades in Rome as well.