(We report hereafter the statement produced by two days of assembly discussion held at the No Tav Venaus camp on 20 and 21 July 2013.)
As movements of struggle for house and housing rights, social centres and occupied spaces, student and precarious workers collectives, militants from the No Tav movement and other struggles in defense of the territories, we met at the Venaus struggling camp – between charges in the woods and moments of struggle and sharing – to build a common path to look forward, towards an autumn of conflict whose urgency is shared by everyone of us.
We recognized the date of October 19 (already outlined during a previous 2-days meeting on housing in Porto Fluviale) as an useful occasion to evaluate a course and intertwine many others. Thus, a starting point, not a conclusive one. Not an event day but a work in progress, to be developed on the different territories from which we hail.
We adopt the proposal developed by the meetings that took place at the Monte Amiata camp* of a diffused mobilization on the territory on October 12, concerning the theme of colonialism on the territories; we are waiting for the confirmation of a trans-national day of mobilization from the Barcelona Hub Meeting for the next October 15; and we commit ourselves to build territorial initiatives of approach, by supporting the strike of the antagonist and rank-and-file trade unions on October 18. Not a date, but a week of mobilization.
A common reflection stressed a necessity that is also a wish: a quantum leap in the movements’ action is needed; we cannot continue to lead divided battles that end up in their own life cycle or in the separation of their specificity, when the command that rules us from above is imposing every day new austerity measures that decide on entire countries’ budget laws. To fight against the TAV is no different from occupying an apartment house to give a residence to who do not have one, to defend someone from an eviction, to struggle for the distribution of a suitable income for everyone, to defend primary services for the people or actively support the struggles that erupt in the labour sector.
The theme of re-appropriation strongly emerged as a necessary corollary in defending the territories from capitalist valorization. We set the key words of “I won’t pay” and “Occupy everything”! as a method and a program, to be carried out in the everyday life of our campaigns.
Real battles to start propose and activate in that fluid social composition of new poors that witnesses as more and more similar in their living conditions and needs precarious, migrants, students, workers and middle classes. Taking back the houses which we do need in order to live, self-reducing ourselves gas, water and electricity bills, to start reducing the blackmail of a tiny and tinier salary labor, forced in a race to the bottom.
On all these themes, in the construction of these week of mobilization, forward and beyond October 19, we invite all those subjects, collectives and individuals that we couldn’t yet manage to met to get in touch with us and engage with us, open both in discussion and debate, with the precise discriminating factor of keeping the independent and autonomous profile of a course conceived as alien from party and institutional representation interests. Thus we commit ourselves, starting from now, to build assembly and organizational events in every territory of ours and a general assembly day to be set in Rome during the second half of September.
Assembly “From the valley to the metropolises”
Venaus, No Tav struggle camp, 20th-21st July 2013
*A previous camp held in July in Tuscany, attended by environmental and territorial struggles’ committees and organizations.