March 8 in Pisa was a combative one. At the end of a most participated cortege and in the context of a most intense day that started at 5.30 am with the strike and the blockades of the Cisanello hospital janitors, in the late evening a building belonging to the municipality, that had been left vacant for years in via Garibaldi 192, was occupied in order to turn it into apartments for women who suffer housing emergency and into a space of organization for the women in struggle.

On March 9 morning, the press conference launched by the assembly of women in struggle that give birth on March 8 evening to the occupied “Mala Servaven Jin” (House of Women who struggle), a name that refers to the Kurdish women struggles. The facility belonging to the Municipality was built with funds tied to the Martelli law as a refuge for incoming migrants. In 2013 the city council and the Società della Salute public company implemented a renovation project through a 640.000€ investment and closed the facility. No works were ever carried out, and years of neglect made the facility a “hygienic bomb”. The occupiers denounced this state of neglect and incury, calling for two days of collective cleaning for Friday and Saturday. A metropolitan assembly was called for Sunday at 6 pm.

But thanks to March 8 and to the impulse that allowed this early moment of redemption, the women who chose to occupy the Mala Servanen Jin took to the stage: “The March 8 mobilization represented a fundamental step for we, the women, who have been struggling for years against the subalternity we live in our lives; in order to break those tacit agreements that we signed among the domestic walls, where we are relegated for a pre-constituted role to take care of children, partners and aged people, annihilating our decision-making autonomy to the point of also suffering its physical consequences, when we try to reclaim it. It is a freedom who makes itself twice as difficult, if the institutions too are complicits and authors of these abuses, who deprive us of the necessary conditions and tools to create and bring forward our independence – by submitting ourselves to judgments and humiliations, in order to have the crumbles that they give to us.

The occupation is a base for organization and a promise to carry on the spirit of conflict and joyful redemption that marked March 8: “March 8 was an important moment in order to share the will of redemption, of living happy and free, of deciding on our own lives, of sending back suffering to those responsible, with everyone. With this spirit, of relentless Pasionarias we reopened this space: a former refuge for migrants, belonging to the city council, that was left abandoned for years to neglect and blight. A building that was closed and left rotting by the City Council that, at the same time, moved the refuge into another rented building, a smaller one.

Now we want, as women, to build together this place, by renaming it “Occupied Mala Servanen Jin” – that in the Kurdish language means “House of Women who struggle”, in order to recall the struggles for emancipation and self-determination of the Kurdish female fighters who oppose the Islamic State and its barbarity, giving birth to a new society. An house where we, the women, want to give birth to a collective space where to redefine ourselves, our lives, defend and reclaim our dignity. A space that is also a house for women who suffer housing emergency.”