I grew in a working-class neighbourhood, one like any other. One of those neighbourhood in which there’s no light at night and in winter not even dogs come out, one of those neighbourhoods abandoned by transports, institutions, services, let alone with run-down streets and floods every month.

In this neighbourhood I grew up and from this neighbourhood I learned how to face hardships. My family lived of the sacrifices of the previous generations, my father has been entitled for four years to redundancy funds and we bear the weight of one of those many mortgages that afflict the lives of proletarian families. The period in school was tough, it had been difficult to buy books, difficult to see my mother crying, difficult to not be able to rely on handouts or facilitations. It had been difficult also to want to learn, to be hungry for knowledge and receive instead puny and falsified concepts at the service of the corporations. It had been difficult to learn everything on my own, what they do not teach you at school, it had been difficult to be without neither opportunities nor occasions. It had been (and still it is) horrible to see neighbourhoods friends, relatives, school mates to die or go to jail, to leave and go away, to succumb to the lack of opportunities and assistance.

In this condition, I became a political militant of what is a political organization with a steadfast and enduring history, but that is not a criminal conspiracy. In five years I leaned from scratch what it means to overcome hardships, collectivize, experiences and inexperiences, read and understand the surrounding reality, I learned how to weep and get dirty, I learned how to raise the voice and how to smile. In these five years I grew up as a man, as a social subject, as a political militant.

In these five years I learned what it means to hate for love, what it means to wake up at morning and feel to not be able to live without doing what I do, what it means to break isolation and fragmentation with the support of my comrades, what it means to be supported by the people. In these five years I realized that I do not want anybody else to live through the privations I did live through, I realized that to fight in order to improve livelihoods is not an hobby, but a duty.

Yesterday I was crushed and frustrated by an unstoppable mechanism.

Today we are the lever that stops this mechanism.

I broke the ghetto cage and now I am community.

I erased sadness, desperation, weariness, individualism, indifference, solitude, manipulation. I gained a new life, made of efforts and continuous experimentations, of experiences and community, of consciousness and reflection, of sharing and solidarity, of reappropriation and determination, of change of the present state of things.

I am proud of those 50 thousands of students that marched at my side against the Gelmini [reform of education in 2010], proud of the workers and the precarious with which I defended the right to income, proud of the homeless families with which I affirmed housing rights, proud of the Teatro Mediterraneo Occupato experience, with which I asserted that a different culture is possible.

It took me 20 years to become what I am.

I have not the slightest intention to stop now.

Carlo, one of the 17 comrades hit by precautionary measures