InfoAut

#Italy #14N: The Rage is Growing

Original statement here

 

The date of November 14th gives us some important elements which we must analyse with care because they can tell us about today’s Italy of conflict. In two days time, on November 16th, the south of our country will face another mobilisation against the crisis. There is, in fact, a complete separation between the trade unions and the effective practice of the general strike. Anyone working in industries in which the the CGIL [*] is present, knows the extent to which trade union officials were eager to minimize the significance of this day among workers.The outcome, in many cases,  as far as real absence from work and attendance of union marches was concerned, was evident. Italy was not shut down as Spain was, and, as a result, young students and precarious workers (who in many cases don’t have the safeguards that trade union members have) were required to play a pivotal role to boost the level of the day up to that seen in other European dimensions.

 

The trade unions spent years and years methodically sabotaging the practice of striking as a tool of re-appropriation, refusal of work and struggle, by repeatedly imposing strikes of two, four or even one hour’s time. In this way the unions have worked to lessen the impact of striking as a tool of social agitation, turning it into a mere tool of statistical “representation” of an industrial dispute, thus reducing it to what is exactly the opposite of the strike – the vote. The ritual strikes of the last years have been misunderstood forms of a controlled expression of dissent towards government policies, always with a negotiating table in mind for the trade unions to sit around, and certainly not stronger for having brought some thousands of workers and loyal pensioners into the squares, but rather for being able to participate in peer meetings between rusted on members of the casta[**].  Because the casta, of course, desperately needs a state trade union to mediate conflicts and, above all, the state needs a sham strike to delude the atomized masses about the extent of their weight in political processes,  in a way this is completely analogous to what happens when they vote.

 

The social composition of students and precarious workers concretely and practically opposes this tendency of the unions by neither passively participating in the #14N strike nor by trying to strictly hegemonise it. This social composition literally built it – it constituted the strike itself, in every way.  It built it by not only being able to express itself with more than ten thousand people participating in each big city, but also by being able, for many hours, to wrest control of significant portions of urban areas from the dominant apparatus and its parasitical institutional appendages by means of collective re-appropriation and direct action.

 

First of all, in Rome – a city where (as we know very well) for many years there has been a taboo about challenging the Roman police department – students imposed their own choices in the streets with determination, as they also did on October 5th. On one hand, they acted on a concrete level: thousands of young people were seen protesting and resisting police charges on Lungotevere, the Tevere promenade; on the other hand, on a symbolic level – which is is a significant consideration to be taken into account-, the practices of political conflict produced effects that resulted in Rome’s name immediately showing up in foreign countries and international media, together with Milan’s name, another city where students imposed sanctions on banks and private universities, and challenged the police’s attempts to block access to the neighbourhood of Porta Genova.

 

Also, in Turin, the social strike entirely outclassed the CGIL’s march, the latter being numerically smaller as compared to the students and precarious workers’ demonstration. Abstension from work and school was an opportunity to move around the city occupying and damaging the seats of financial and political institutions and ministerial offices, eventually ending in the new re-appropriation of a housing space for university students and scholarship holders: the Verdi 3.0 building. The police prooved themselves completely unable to handle the situation, which spread through the entire city of Turin and also the nearby Susa Valley, where the “No Tav” movement,  opposing soil drilling in the valley, occupied highways and local roads last night, and are still fighting police at the time of writing (night of the 14th of November).

 

In Naples, a city which had experienced a strong anger against the ministers of Monti’s goverment just the previous day, the railway station was occupied, as was also the case in Palermo. In Bologna, Genoa, Catania, Pisa, Modena and Bergamo strikes by the cities’ transport workers paralysed public transport systems and demonstrated the centrality of the social anger against the crisis. This succeeded in transforming an empty masquerade; a  made-up strike politically ‘militarized’ by the CGIL into a soul-enlighting device, into an act that gave space back to the people and attacked institutional buildings (even in those cases in which the institutional power is represented by the trade unions themselves, as in Bologna, where the CISL[***] offices were occupied). The strike became a device that is able to resist repressive mechanisms. Violent mechanisms indeed, but, at the same time, mechanisms that are experiencing moments of crisis: in Turin, the provincial administration building was invaded and plundered by hundreds of people, with police unable to maintain a presence after already being forced to retreat twice before; and in Rome and Brescia where the riot police gave in to the usual unmotivated provocations as they coldly charged protesters and commited unprovoked acts of violence on those arrested.

 

The essential fact which emerges from the Italian #14N can be summarised as follows: after many years of complete passivity on the part of the masses, as well as a tireless political oppression of social forces, something is moving. In just one day we stormed our towns, each by our own means and within the limits of the possibilities given by the respective contexts, but we did achieve some important results. This was possible because we know that we are the many, and in many different places at the same time, and everybody in the streets knew that young, precarious Italy, where ever it finds itself, struggles and does not take part in strolling parades. We know that in Italy the wind is slowly changing, too slowly, perhaps, but it is changing nevertheless. And all together we managed to defeat the dishonest staged celebrations of the trade union burocracy. With our presence in the streets, we conquered the political stage far beyond the stage-managed moments that catch the interest of the newspapers and TV stations. A triumph?  No! Just a tiny step towards the transformation we have to affect, useful only because another thousand steps are waiting to be taken.

 

Infoaut

 


[*] The main Italian trade union, historically close to the Communist Party and now with its centre-left successors. The main body of CGIL itself, as the other unions addressed to in the document, is to be thought of as a bureaucratic, hierachical trade union, ready to work with state and capitalist institutions –  thus very different from forms of rank-and-file unionism closer to various areas of the Italian autonomous movement.


[**] “The ruling caste”: a popular catch-phrase in Italy, referring to the upper echelons of political parties and extensively to state, judicial and industrial institutions.


[***] Another italian trade union,  historically close to the left of the Christian Democracy Party, now strong in the pensioners’ union; as far as the workers are concerned, they distinguished themself by being compliant to the employers’ requests.

Ti è piaciuto questo articolo? Infoaut è un network indipendente che si basa sul lavoro volontario e militante di molte persone. Puoi darci una mano diffondendo i nostri articoli, approfondimenti e reportage ad un pubblico il più vasto possibile e supportarci iscrivendoti al nostro canale telegram, o seguendo le nostre pagine social di facebook, instagram e youtube.

pubblicato il in Traduzionidi redazioneTag correlati:

14NEnglishitaly

Articoli correlati

Immagine di copertina per il post
Intersezionalità

Pride critico, Pride comodo

Dov’è stato lasciato il “prendere e fare” a favore del “chiedere e aspettare”? Gli oppressi hanno iniziato un ciclo politico in cui si costituiscono come vittima senza agency che cerca di essere protetta. Il presente testo è la traduzione di un articolo di Charlie Moya Gómez pubblicato in castigliano su Zona de Estrategia il 27/06/2024. […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Un suspiro de alivio, nada más

Más que la victoria a medias de la izquierda en Francia, lo que realmente podemos celebrar es la derrota de la Agrupación Nacional de Le Pen. Una derrota clara, una buena noticia a corto plazo pero que, después de haber suspirado de alivio, nos obliga a hacernos unas cuantas preguntas

Immagine di copertina per il post
Approfondimenti

Crisi ecologica, crisi capitalista, crisi dell’ecologismo politico – Parte prima

L’ecologismo politico, inteso come movimento sociale antagonista, non solo non ha incrementato la sua potenza politica nell’attuale contesto di effervescenza discorsiva green, ma sembra che stia implodendo. La presentazione della crisi ecologica nelle società capitalistiche occidentali racchiude un paradosso che aggiunge confusione politica a un mondo postpandemico già di suo tendente al disordine. A prima […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Approfondimenti

Proprietà collettiva contro il Capitalocene

“I rapporti di proprietà capitalistica sono il nucleo del modello sociale ed economico dominante e sono anche la causa fondamentale dei cambiamenti irreversibili prodotti negli ecosistemi di cui facciamo parte. Viviamo nell’era del Capitalocene, non in quella dell’Antropocene.”

Immagine di copertina per il post
Bisogni

Lo sciopero nazionale delle lavoratrici di Inditex in Spagna: “È una scintilla in espansione”

In Spagna, la multinazionale Inditex (Zara, Bershka, Pull and Bear ecc) sta vivendo un acceso conflitto lavorativo al suo interno, da quando, lo scorso dicembre, un gruppo di lavoratrici ha organizzato uno sciopero molto partecipato che ha portato ad un aumento significativo dei loro stipendi.

Immagine di copertina per il post
Crisi Climatica

Lavoro sottopagato, vita carissima e ambiente devastato

“La verità è che né l’umanità è colpevole della crisi ecologica né la natura e la società sono cose separate. In realtà, i corpi della classe lavoratrice vengono sfruttati nello stesso modo del resto della natura.” Il presente testo è la traduzione di un articolo di Rubén Martínez e Carme Arcarazo (La Hidra Cooperativa) pubblicato […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Crisi Climatica

Contro il capitalismo del disastro

«La decrescita nella sfera materiale dell’economia è un dato. Il declino di energie e materiali, o la diminuzione delle raccolte che vengono colpite dal cambiamento climatico o i problemi dell’acqua sono fatti. Né il modello alimentare attuale, né quello dei trasporti, né quello energetico, né il consumo potranno essere sostenuti in un contesto di contrazione materiale. Subire contrazione materiale nell’ordine economico e politico attuale, senza trasformare i rapporti che esistono al suo interno, vuol dire mettere la politica nella zattera della Medusa, dove le uniche possibilità sono uccidere o morire.»

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Special surveillance requested for five Italians who supported anti-ISIS struggle in Syria

On January 3 the Digos political police in Turin notified the request of “special surveillance” for two years – with compulsory residence in Turin – brought forward by the city’s public prosecutor against those who supported the Rojava revolution. The recipients of this measure are Paolo, Eddi, Jak, Davide and Jacopo, five youth that – […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

“If we want to change our destiny we must struggle in the streets”

A call-up for an alliance between French working-class neighbourhoods and Gilets Jaunes. Interview with Youcef Brakni. Youcef Brakni is a spokeperson for the Comité Adama, calling for joining up the Gilets Jaunes movement demonstration in Paris on December 1 (and beyond). A position that cuts in its own way the internal debate of the militants […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Is State better than Neoliberalism..?

The real movement which abolishes the present state of things. Starting from this one-in-a-million definition provided by Marx regarding what communism is, we can add that, in the epochal transition within which the Moor lived and acted another issue was quite clear: the State, a decisive political invention of Western and Capitalist modernity, is an […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

From our mountains to Northern Syria, always partisans!

A letter for April 25 from some Italians in the Northern Syria revolution Seventy-three years ago Italy was liberated from Nazifascist oppression. The partisans were part of that generation that decided to fight fascism and struggle for a society more humane, free and just. A difficult venture for which many sacrificed their lives. Many more […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Migrants and supporters break through Gendarmerie blockade, cross French border at Monteginevro

Hundreds of migrants and supporters break through Gendarmerie lines at the French-Italian border; the fascists of Defend Europe pack up and remove the “blockade” at the frontier. Last Friday a group of Italian and French fascists of the Defend Europe/Generazione Identitaria network reached the Colle della Scala pass, at the border between Italy and France, […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Solidarity initiatives for Afrin all over Italy

Hundreds of people answered, in Italy too, to the call arriving from the Kurdish enclave under attack by Erdogan. The Kurdish people always said it: we have no allies, except for the mountains. After having produced the erasure of ISIS from Syria’s map, the international community decided to abandon the Kurdish people to its fate. […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

#DefendAfrin: urgent call for mobilization

This is the message that Jacopo, editor of the Infoaut.org portal being based in the Afrin canton since the beginning of the Turkish-Jihadi aggression, delivered to us a short while ago. An urgent call to mobilize and break the silence in front of the worsening of the situation in Afrin. In the latest hours the […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

The resistible rise of neofascism in Italy and its opponents

What is happening in Italy right now? In the wake of the recent episodes of xenophobic and right-wing attacks and terrorism, has the people of Italy turned conservative – or outrightly fascist? Little can be inferred about the state of the country from mainstream reports and correspondents, who in most cases present it through the […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

From Macerata to Piacenza: antifas are unwilling to delegate, and counter-attack!

Last week in Italy there was a strong antifascist reaction in the streets of dozens of cities after the terrorist attack in Macerata (Marche) by Luca Traini, a Lega xenophobic party militant who shot and injured six black-skin people as a kind of vigilante revenge against other crimes occurred there. With rampant media overexposure of […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Briser les frontières: hundreds of people from Claviere to Monginevro for freedom of movement

Hundreds of people join the march from Claviere to Monginevro in solidarity with migrants trying the crossing towards France, against borders and for freedom of movement. “Briser les frontières”: break the borders – these were the rallying cries with which the initiative that took place last Sunday at the Italian-French border was called. A march […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Neither for recklessness nor for calculation. No Tav December 8: Freedom now for Alice, Umbe and Cesare

A text written for three No Tav comrades which were arrested last saturday during an action against the great work’s construction yard. Now they are out of jail, with mandatory residence and sign-in at the Police Department in their hometowns.   On December 8, 2005, fifty thousands of No Tav activists reconquered Venaus town, fenced […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

Black Friday: fifty shades of black. On the Amazon strike

An account and some musings on the “Red Friday”, the strike of Amazon workers in Italy and Germany. For an insight on Amazon (its organization, its main Italian plant and its forms of labour we address you to our inquiry: “Amazon: Quando la merce danza automatizzata sul lavoro-tapis roulant”). In the management manuals it is […]

Immagine di copertina per il post
Traduzioni

G20 Trial in Hamburg: Fabio’s Speech

Fabio Vettorel, a nineteen years old, has been jailed for 4 months in Billwerder {Hamburg}. He is the last Italian still in jail after the protests against the G20. The youth from Feltre was arrested in the aftermath of the mobilizations and convicted for petty crimes «creating public nuisance», the «attempt to inflict damage by […]