Today we were more than two hundreds of people in front of the courthouse in Milan in order to support Marcelo: a friend, a comrade, a migrant that came here from Ecuador, with the will to struggle and take a challenge side by side with those that, in our country, decided not to bow their heads. In the Valley [the No TAV Susa valley – t.n.] as in the city, we shared assemblies and barricades, laughs and rage with Marcelo. Cowardly, the Italian State would like now to deny him the right to stay in Italy, without renewing his residence permit because his alleged “social dangerousness”. We call generosity in struggle what gray bureaucrats and blue uniforms call “social dangerousness”, making it the pretext to punish Marcelo’s political activity, denying him a piece of paper.

Not only we return to the sender that accusation of “social dangerousness”, but we overturn it. During the hearing, the watchful men of the political police enumerated the anti-eviction pickets and the demonstrations Marcelo did partake as if they were crimes to be ashamed of. But for any individual that does not live with the self-assurance of those who wear an uniform, these are as many proofs of the generosity of who, everyday, wakes up in order to do what everyone recognizes to be the right thing: to fight together against an increasingly unbearable state of things. A courage that we would like to see more often – because in a world were injustice reigns, to be considered socially dangerous by our rulers is a minimum target for everyone. And today we were many because we precisely know that the blackmail that everyone of us suffers is the same one of Marcelo: who stands above is frightened, and would like to punish and reward us accordingly to out passivity, accordingly to our ability to fatalistically swallow everything they stuff us with.

At about 10.30 am we were already more than 100 to wait for Marcelo outside the Court in a picket that grew all over the morning. A morning in which we still had to witness the pathetic farce of those who would like to create, with the police, fear around those who struggle: 30 mercenaries of the DIGOS political police came to escort Marcelo during the hearing with the goal of presenting him to the judge as a public enemy – and about a hundred of anti-riot police agents were watching the supporters.

After the decision of the Court, that postponed to February 19 the decision on the residence permit, the picket turned into a march that arrived to the Statale university. Over there, a most participated assembly talked about the problems that the struggling migrants face and fight against; and of what it does mean to make moments in which to create from repression wide and determined demonstrations.

From all over Italy, as friends and comrades, we connected up in order to say something: the cowardice of the State will not win over the courage of those who struggle.

Hands off Marcelo! Let’s break the blackmail!

#CeloLibre

14.10.2016