Bologna – On the previous sunday, while the director of LegaCoop (a league featuring most of the biggest cooperative companies) Giuliano Poletti is nominated Minister of Labour, the logistics’ workers assembly at the Laboratorio Crash autonomous social center in Bologna launched a day of nationwide general strike in the sector for Friday 28. The grassroots unions’ requests were: the reinstatement of all the 51 fired workers, the payment of the due salaries and arrears and the withdrawal of all the charges against the workers on strike.

Pisa – The popular masses of the CEP (Centro Edilizia Popolare) reclaimed several sports fields in the peripheral neighbourhood, in protest over real property speculation and neglect state of the area. Some fifteen agents from local and political police could not do anything but to let pass the demonstrators, which invaded the pitch inaugurated and then kept shut down by the centre-left administration and set up a memorial tournament for a late ultras of the local soccer team.

Leghorn – Hundreds of amaranto antifascist ultras from the local soccer team clashed twice in the morning with the fascist and xenophobic supporters of the Hellas Verona team, arrived with buses and cars from the Venetian city.

Rome – Two activists under house arrests for the 31o demonstration are freed under daily requirements to sign-in. Luca stays in hunger strike but is allowed to go to perform his duty as an educator three times per week.

 

TUESDAY 25F

Italy – Concern over the nuclear sympathies of the newly appointed Emilian ministers Galletti (Environment) and Guidi (Economic Development). Resort to nuclear energy for civilian use was rejected by a popular referendum in 2011 in the aftermath of the Fukushima incident.

Turin – Anti-no tav movement public prosecutors indict the famous writer Erri De Luca for incitement to break the law for his outspoken support to the high-speed train popular opposition.

Milan – After a vibrant popular mobilization, a big 40-million waterway project in preparation for the 2015 Expo is downsized, thus saving several natural parks in the western area of the metropolis.

Rome – After resisting to yet another eviction attempt by police forces in the morning, activists from the struggling housing rights movements occupied the scaffolds of the Pyramid in the Ostiense area; a public assembly followed in the afternoon to launch a city demonstration for next Thursday 27F, in order to tackle the Marino administration policies on evictions and housing rights.

 

WEDNESDAY 26F

Italy – With a message apparently delivered to the jailed mafia boss Totò Riina – but actually functional to the media apparatus – the shadowy Falange Armata group reappears in the midst of a dire institutional crisis for the first time since the nineties. Most likely created by the Italian secret service, this structure worked in the past to divert investigations on mafia and state crimes and evoke stricter security measures.

Rome – A punitive transfer of three deliverymen affiliated to the SI Cobas grassroots union was revoked after the other workers went on strike, claiming adjustment of their pay slips to the national agreed standards as well.

Turin – Tens of school social workers stay in picket beneath the Turinese municipal building. As layoffs and salary cuts loom, some of them even chained themselves to the building. A solidarity demonstration is scheduled to take place next Monday.

Bologna – Activists and families from the Social Log housing and livelihood rights desk temporarily occupied a labour exchange in the city downtown in order to draw attention on the dire local housing emergency: 7000 empty houses, 400 assignments each year, 600 families awaiting for social housing and 40000 others experiencing housing hardships. A communicational march through the area ensued.

Florence – 50 comrades from the Assembly against Austerity and activist from Committees for public water protested beneath the Publiacqua local water company against the high prices and low quality of the service and its deprivation from defaulting families. As the company management rejected these claims, the picket temporarily occupied their offices.

 

THURSDAY 27F

Rome – More than 10000 people take the streets in solidarity with the detained housing rights activists and in protest against the disastrous state of the capitol public finances. After the previous administrations piled up a huge debt of 816 million, the passing of executive decrees is required to avoid the city being put under an emergency commission.

Pisa – The city council of Cascina, a town in the Pisan hinterland, was invaded by enraged citizens after a resident, working in the university canteen, committed suicide for not being able to pay for her rent. An official meeting was scheduled for the next Wednesday, when the PrendoCasa collective is going to intimate an immediate halt of evictions and decent livelihood for any citizen suffering housing hardships.

 

FRIDAY 28F

Bologna – Countrywide general strike of the logistics’ workers,supported by the solidarity movements against exploitation and precarity. In the Bologna area, loaders fired from the Granarolo and Cogefrin companies stood in picket at the gates of the transnational dairy company since 6 a.m. till midday with autonomous militants. At the same time, other comrades blocked the Granarolo factory in Modena, a city near Bologna, in order to prevent trucks arriving there from the picketed Bolognese Granarolo factory. Workers on strike also at the DHL logistics’ company hub near Milan, while Anonymous Italia brought down the Granarolo web site for the whole day.

Pisa – The Ariston Cinema, previously squatted on 31 October 2013 after the huge 19o demonstration in Rome, is once again opened to the citizens for a 2-days occupation in which cultural events and a roundtable on social struggles in the peripheral neighbourhoods will be hosted.

Messina – Provocation by the DIGOS political police: mass identification for the Casa dello Studente student house occupiers and an order to leave the building, which is promptly rejected.

Val Susa – After defecting their trial in Turin, the indicted NO TAV activists asked their defense attorneys to not represent them anymore because of the many flaws in the lawsuit and hearings, and moved to Giaglione in Val Susa. There, along with 500 people from the valley, they marched towards the construction yard and faced the truncheons of its security forces.

Fraconalto (Alessandria) – Suspect truck traffic on the plots on which works for the TAV third cross are scheduled to start – though lacking necessary authorization for the time being. The No Tav Third Cross movement is all-aware and revamps the Sunday demonstration in Valverde.

SATURDAY 1M

Bologna – A mestizo composition swept through the city on a migrant March 1, international day of the refugee. The event, largely watered-down in the previous years by para-institutional networks and frameworks, was participated by the struggling loaders of the Emilian logistics’ sector, by high school and university students and by housing rights activists and social centers. Among the many targets of the demonstration there were the Bossi-Fini (that makes illegal immigration a crime punishable by jail) and Turco-Napolitano (which set the legal framework for the CPT/CIE migrant detention centers and their atrocities) laws, exploitation in the logistics’ sector, the boundaries of Fortress Europe and Italian institutional racism. Many chants in solidarity with Vincenzo, an activist from the Laboratorio Crash autonomous social center sentenced to house arrests because of his involvement in a picket in solidarity with logistics’ workers.

Ravenna – At the end of city-wide march organized by the students of the local Autonomous Student Collective, a new Selva social space was occupied – after the previous one was burnt some weeks ago by unknown assailants.

Niscemi (Caltanissetta) – 6000 people from the NO MUOS movement advanced towards the US imperialist base, and its harmful radar project. They managed to have in their sight the radar antennas, that the police declared they wouldn’t have been able to see. Brief clashes ensued.

Neaples – 39 Mc Donald’s employees were sacked today, in an ongoing struggle against the company layoffs which is featuring workers blocking one of its fast foods in Piazza Municipio.

Rome – A meeting of the battered European neofascist right took place at the Pineta Palace Hotel. Of all the attendees, Greek Golden Dawn suffered high-profile arrests and may have to change its name; Italian Forza Nuova and Spanish Democracia Nacional struggle to participate in the upcoming European elections and the British National Party is on the verge of bankrupcy. Some hours before the meeting, local antifascists threw a remarkable quantity of dung and mice inside of the hotel.

 

SUNDAY 2M

Italy – Data about repression of the NO TAV movement are released. In the past four years over a thousand activists were put investigation, with prominent personalities such as the philosopher Gianni Vattimo, writer Erri de Luca and comedian Beppe Grillo being incriminated as well.