Original statement here

Towards the general uprising of October 19

Movement Assembly – Saturday 28 September h 10 a.m. @ La Sapienza University, Rome

Every day thousands of people struggle in this country. To get at the end of the month, to defend the right to housing, to affirm their own dignity, to defend territories and the common goods from devastation and pillaging. In most cases, we are talking about separate paths that do not manage to convey themselves into a general discourse. We look forward to reverse the isolation of individual struggles and the precariousness of our existences to bring about a day of struggle to revamp an autumn of conflict in our country, against austerity and precariousness imposed from above by an European and global governance that is increasingly subdued to the fierce interests of finance, banks and the powers that be.

On October 19 we want to bring about a general uprising.

An open day of struggle, to be generalized by crossing paths, putting side by side young precarious workers and esodati [1], evicted people, occupiers, homeless and migrants, students and refugees, no tav and workers on redundancy payment, anyone fighting for affirming their own rights and in the defence of territories. United against the perspectives of impoverishment and exploitation outlined by the troika and by the obedience of a technocratic government that, among “del Fare” [2] decrees and “Service Taxes” [3], favours the wealthy to snatch even more from the poors: by trading the IMU [4] with new cuts to public expenditure and with a new aggression against housing rights; by supporting real estate speculation, the consumption of soil and the valorization processes useful for the rent, while there are hundreds of thousands of empty houses around; by delegating services and welfare to a local governance which, to square off balances, will raise taxes and will produce even more cuts and privatizations. All of this by preparing in the meantime a new “humanitarian” war of unpredictable consequences.

Against this horizon of misery, we aim to build a big massive demonstration strongly claiming the issues of income and housing rights, thus we want an immediate halt to evictions, the recovery of public assets and the defense of collective and common wealth, even in order to fight against precariousness and the common precarization of our living and working conditions we are ever more forced to bear.

The October 19 demonstration will come after one week of mobilizations, in and out the country: on October 12, with a day of struggle in defence of the territories against privatization of public services and destruction of the commons, and widespread mobilization for housing rights; on October 15 with  widespread initiatives in various cities towards a social strike set by transnational movements’ agenda; on October 18 with a joint demonstration with grassroots antagonist trade unions.

We want to reverse the blackmail of precariousness and austerity in a process of collective re – appropriation. In order to revamp a movement claiming the only great work we are interested in: house, income and dignity for everyone!

Assembly “From the valley to the metropolises”

Venaus, struggling No Tav camp, 1st September 2013

[1] Esodati – people who left their work but could not retire yet because of a reform by the previous Monti government postponing retirement age

[2] “Del fare” decree – literally, “to do” decree, a decree by the Letta government to soften construction yard and landfill regulations to the detriment of people, among other short-sighted measures attempting to revive the Italian economy

[3] Service Tax – eeriely enough abbreviated by its TASER acronym, it is a newly issued tax introduced by the Letta government, which actually combines previous house and garbage taxes

[4] Imposta municipale unica (IMU) – A previous house tax issued introduced by the Berlusconi IV government