24th August, Rome

Imagine a sharp razor on which you must keep the balance untill the next elections. For one more year. Where everything that happens on a national and european level it’s cause of contention and clash for a unique reason: to win or to die. On this razors there are two candidates: the government’s party, Pd the one of Renzi, and the M5s ( 5-star Movement) that a year ago gave a very hard hit to the first one: loosing the municipal elections in Rome, the Capital. So Indipendeza square is the emblem of this clash that is going on on the head of migrants, refugees, homeless, unemployed, exploited and so on. Paradoxically this match is played against all the practices that from decades we use to resist to the clear will of lowering our expectations, our need, our dreams and our perspectives of life. To the refugees of Indipendenza square is denied the possibility of becoming a migrant subjectivity that builds possibilities of life in a country that doesn’t want to give those if not as slaves in the fields of the south of Italy or in the logistic’s warehouses of the north. All of us whose are living in squats, frequent the social centers, strikers, fighting for our existance we are contention ground to repatriate in to the suburbs far away from the eyes of the decent, well-thinking, international and local borgeoisie. Ot only that, control, surveil, obstacle, evict and marginalize those who do not want to succumb; defeat the practices which consent a minimum ascent related to the life that they’re trying to force us: that’s the real goal. Who will allow to the Italians (which Italians?) the sense of safety made of decency, honesty, legality? Who will guarantee that when there won’t be enough for everybody the lacking, poor part will always be the same, and forced to stay silent? Who?

The minister Minnit is the right man at the right time, he gets defrost when the ship is sinking. He’s the man with the iron fist that when it’s necessary and without compromises takes the necessery decisions. Minniti is nothing more than the lifebelt of the Pd. After the “tears and blood” reforms of the Renzi’s government and the electoral defeats from the M5s it was necessary someone who could resume consensus on the ground of that impoverishment created from the Pd. Renzi has done the Jobs Act (work’s reform), Piano Casa (housing reform), Buona Scuola (“the good school” education refom), and couple of laws totally dedicated to the worst austerity and than he found somebody who could silence all those who are complaining and keep the backstage-borgeoisie safe. Minniti is the birth of a PD in crisis that forces the austerity than has to manage the descent of consensus. Starting from this precise point we can find the origins of the “safety decree” that includes new CIE (Center for Identification and Expulsion, basicly refugees’ prisons), urban Daspo (expulsion from a certain urban area) and all those measures repressing any behaviour that resists to the diktat of the over-exploitation.

Let’s focus on Indipendenza square. In July Minister for Internal affairs orders to evict all the occupied buildings belonging to privates, most of all the ones who have being sueing many times at the police headquarters, and if not, the majors could face consequences. Not randomly, at the same time the residency in the squats (denied from the Renzi’s “Piano casa”) was entrusted to the discretion of the mayors. It’s easy to think that the responsibility/threat pending on the local administrators it is nothing more than a provocation to the PD’s first enemy Raggi, in Rome, the city of housing squats’ par excellence. The management of the Municipality of Rome it’s gonna be the M5s’s test even where the Pd has precedently failed in the case of the scandal “Mafia Capitale”. The Rome’s Democratic Party it is in fact been commissioned because of all the collusions and bribes and still it hasn’t started any recovery process. The eviction of Cinecittà and Indipendenza square are slaps in the name of safety e legality to which the M5s can’t turn the head properly in the name of the same legality and sense of safety. The prefect Paola Basilone trying to defend the minister Minniti and the police says that the legality it has been re-established but now it’s the municipality’s role that’s missing, since they had found any solution for the 107 refugees considered “fragile”.
The 5 Star Movement can’t give any answer. The SOS (social operative service) it has been providing family houses to a low-number of people separing families and proposing an accomodation, through the owner of the building, in Rieti. But why should those be the solutions? In the prefect’s opinion the Movements are pushing the refugees to refuse the accomodations, in Di Maio’s idea the Romans come first, so the refugees have to be content. But the men and women of Indipendenza square want to stick together because once divided they’d be alone in a country that wants them slaves. Isn’t that a legitimate answer? The reception system is enemy of the migrants. It represents the business for the cooperatives and associations profiteeing on the migrant’s conditions. They decided to self-organize as a better solution to this reception system, as a better answer to Mafia Capitale and, most of all, as a better way to satisfy their needs!

But the mayor Raggi has other problems: resisting to the PD. The same day of the eviction she has done another internal epuration. The councilor at the budget Mazzilo with a delegation to the housing emergency was sent away by the junta. The reasons seems to be unknown but it’s most likely related to his contrarieness to the agreement with Atac. Behind this we see something more. For example the fact that he was against the evictions? It’s not going to be easy to understand but there are too many coincidencies in few days. The mayor is not only forced because of the directives but she can’t even oppose this would go against the rethortic of rules made by the same people to which the M5s says to oppose. The junta has closed itself in the ivory tower, it doesn’t listen to anybody, doesn’t talk the only trusted identity is itself, and not even that much since they’ve epurated a central man as Mazzillo from the Movement.
At this point of the story, the use the beginning’s metaphor it would be necessary a razor, the Occam’s razor. The possible solution to the problem it’s the simplest, to support the push of who’s on the edge not only resisting to the clash Pd-M5s played on our heads, struggles and achievements but maybe re-stablishing as a collective behaviour that there’s no solution if not that we’ve to block the attempt of putting more borders between us our conquers and our rights. They’re mostly trying to get us used to give up. They’re getting us used to the fact that the times are hard and that we have to give up in order to survive. But as the refugees of Indipendenza square have shown to survive it’s not an option. They flew theirs countries, in was because of ours, in order to live. It’s not possible to get temporary solutions, to make their children change school or to get transferred in province of Rieti, loosing their jobs in Rome. It’s not plausible for all of us to allow the lowering of our expectations and life prospects.

For this reason, Saturday 26th it will be an important moment for the whole city, a moment in which we have to establish our rules. The path of the two main political forces pointing to the couches of parliament and government must be hard and uphill. To win this battle, make a step forward for the refugees, for all of us, migrants, Italians, yellow, greens and reds means to re-establish the sense of the order in the speech. And here there won’t be any racism or wars between poors but we’ll just bring to the surface the statal racism that’s existing. We need this, achievements, because whenever we give up to the defeat, to the evictions, the raids, to the Piano Casa, to the Jobs Act, to the safety defree we let the way clear to our enemy, the one that wants us silent and obedient, to one that wants us defeated, weak and gooders to the eyes of who should be our brother and sister.

______

Here is the translation of the article about the call of the demo and the development of Saturday 26^th:

Minniti retreats. Demo in Rome from Piazzale Esquilino

The government retreats. The minister of internal affairs Marco Minniti and his partner, Andrea Orlando, minister of justice, after the eviction of Indipendeza square declare: never again evictions without finding a solution before. It’s strange that the council of order (composed by prefect, municipality of Rome, superintendent of police and region) before taking this kind of decisions, doesn’t know what it’s doing, no?
Even the eviction of Cinecittà ended up in leaving hundreds of people camping in Santi Apostoli square, and yet today this declarations came, probably always inside this pre-electoral games between the Pd and the m5s junta. In Pd’s opinion le alternative accomodations are not a Internal affairs minister’s prerogative but only of the Municipality and the mayor Raggi answers about the government’s responsabilities on the reception of migrants.
There’s a point that maybe these “legalist” narration to not want to understand: the people who can’t afford to pay a rent squat houses because there’s any other choice. If there would be popular houses for everybody or If the thousands of blocked apartments in the city were required, kept so in order to avoid the lowering the price of the rents, nobody would think about squatting a house. So the logic says that there aren’t plausible accomodations nor for the squatters of Indipendenza square nor for the other.
Only the mayor Raggi thinks to live in Red hood’s world and still talks about the SOS (social operative service) and about the houses in the province of Rieti offered by the same owner of the ex-Inps building. The mayor Raggi will pay the conseguences of his politic made of nothing, of fairytales. She’s a bit like Marie Antoniette, it seems like hearing her saying: “let them eat brioche, we only care about legality”. Thanks to the struggles of the last 5 years organize by those 5000 individuals which are leaving in the housing squats several millions of euros have been allocated to face the housing emergency of the whole city that regards squatters and not, migrants and Italians. But the municipality refuses to use them because for the junte who squats is abusive and it’s dirty of the original sin: illegality. A moralism that has pissed us e most of all in a moment when there aren’t alternative politics on the ground. Surely gifting ectars of soil to Parnassi in order to build the Rome’s stadium doesn’t match in line of purity of Virginia Raggi’s politics. But why should we exclusively criticize only the paladin of Rome? A big part of the movement supports the mayor and as Di Maio says: who cares about the refugees, the Romans first.
A responsability game played on our heads that has to be sent back with the strenght necessary. The resistance of Cinecittà and of Indipendenza square has been fundamental to turn the strategic plan of Pd-M5s about legality/illegality and immigration. To defend the squats, conquer the housing right and all what they’re trying to take away from us daily it’s fundamental. An achievement for someone is an achievement for everybody. The retreat of Minniti it’s a coincidence. The declarations of this morning are always far of letting the responsabilities on someone else, the M5s in this case, but anyway they realize that the evictions are not without low-cost and that are on a hard ground all uphill. We still have a long-therm work to do in order to avoid to fall in the trap of the war between similar. It has to be uphill when it’s about refugees, evicted Italians or about the evictions of the Ater’s popular houses. The Unity a priori is and ideological trick but it’s clear that if a part of us picks up the responsibility of supporting some achievements, struggling, resisting, conquering spaces of freedom and social justice than the benefits will be for all of us.
In a few minutes the demo will start prof Esquilino square, it will be an important moment to give continuity to yesterday’s resistance, to relaunch our opposition to the evictions and to point out that who wants us obedients and silent, event in front of the violence of the evictions and of coated decrees, has just taken a damn wrong road. For this reason we remind to everyone that during the clashes there’s been 4 arrests and that the demo will claim their immediate liberation!!