Should we address this letter to the workers who, yesterday*, were lined up against us while saying hypocritically that they intended to confront the police? Or to those who denounced our agitation, creating discussion inside their own block? To those close to the clash with the police who said our “caos” was “fucking annoying”? To those that stated their approval for the rage of the streets against the hypocritical conference? Should we address those among you only able to mechanically repeat what the union leaders have been feeding into your ears for twenty years, or to those who do think and attend simply to their own class interests, admitting that, in the face of the bosses attacks in the last twenty years, the unions, or even the factory workers themselves, “haven’t done anything”, “haven’t even made half a reaction” or have made “words” “speeches” “demonstrations without results”, while their, and our, life is being slowly destroyed?

We speak to all of you, naturally, but particularly to those of you who think differently to us. With one exception: Maurizio Landini*. He behaved too rudely yesterday morning, indifferently, hypocritically, calculatingly. He had the attitude of someone who does not want to perceive reality, who is totally alienated from reality, and is able to see every scene as only a flash-back, a deja vu. An arrogant and ignorant attitude. He didn’t ask himself why the police had attacked the students and the precarious. He didn’t ask why the students and the precarious tried to tear down the barrier between themselves and the conference. He just condemned us as if he was Jesus Christ because we “disturbed” the city centre during his speech. Because we did this we were “silly”. It was impossible, for him, that the rage of the young was based in thought and conviction, and analysis of the economic crisis or the role of the “police-workers” in it, that was different from his. Impossible that the emotion and rage in the square had a class basis as legitimate as that of the metal workers. We were just stupid, silly; maybe because we had not listened carefully enough to his illuminating words?

But we did listen to what he said, while the riot cops fired at our heads and chests with teargas grenades (which used in this way can be lethal) like they have been doing in Susa Valley* for the last three years. We heard the droning of his words while boys of sixteen were beaten by simultaneously by eight police officers, handcuffed, taken to the police station, charged, and put under house arrest or in gaol. We read on the internet soon after how this union leader, not content with all this, criticised the police, not for having defended the conference and attacking the students but for not having defended it well enough, for not having attacked the “antagonists” effectively enough (not pre-emptively maybe). (Then he went to protest at the police station where he was told to fuck off by the police chief.)

So we don’t address Landini, but the workers that listened to him, maybe annoyed by the noise the clash was making a hundred meters behind them. We ask them: for how much long will you believe that the only thing you need to do to stop the attacks of the bosses is to demonstrate your numbers now and then? For how much longer will you continue to think that listening to the speeches made by union leaders is fair compensation for loosing a days pay? For how long will you believe the stories of unionists who say that the young are “provocateurs” used by the police, that behind us is the government, conspiracy, the strategy of tension? For how much longer will you be bullshitted? We know that for many of you, your organisation is important in terms of the experience, struggle and hope it represents. We respect this, despite of how differently we  conceive of strategy and organisation. And only if you have the same respect for us, do you posses the sensibility of struggle and being a class. You know that one of the arrested was a factory worker? But anyway: what if he was not? We hope you don’t believe only factory workers are exploited: that would be rather backward.

We know well, living in Turin, that you are unused to these critiques. We know that you are used to being patronised by the council, by the unions, by journalists  and by politicians. Don’t they have a care for the “poor workers” of the industrial archipelago of Piemonte? Don’t they have kind words for you? Aren’t they ready to give words of solidarity to and to accept your contestation of the “problems” they say they “understand”? We are sorry to say it, but these gentlemen that patronise you with words in the newspapers are those who fuck you over. We are sorry to put it so bluntly, but its true and most of you, in your hearts, know it. So we talk to you in this direct way, peer-to-peer, exploited-to-exploited (that is what interests us, not propaganda) because we are not hypocrites like your secretary.

You know, we don’t feel at all subordinate to you factory workers. We are workers in the great production line of the city. We are those who serve you coffee in the bar in the morning. We are those who designed the website of your union or the pub where you drink a beer once in a while. We cook the pizza or the toast that Chiamparino and Marchionne* let you have as charity. We have packed the commodities that you find in the market and the newsagent. We took care of your cousin when she was ill. We help teach your children in school. We transport the newspapers that patronise you and insult us. We search for our next job for most of our “free” time. We don’t have great contracts or guarantees (won by a working class that would have kicked Landini’s arse yesterday); we don’t have redundancy pay when we are fired and we earn half, or a third, of what you earn.

Because of all this, tell your secretary, when he addresses us, to watch his words; because we are incandescent with rage. We don’t want the workfare he speaks of in his delirium. We want dignity and respect. We are proletariat and we want to explode this shitty society. Maybe you didn’t get it (the police did): We are the only allies you have in Italy. Yes, us, who throw the tomatoes at the defenders of the ministers. Just us. Do you want to continue to listen to the speeches which don’t challenge anything? Go ahead! We are not Christians: the oppressed interest us when they rebel, and when they don’t we leave them to the missionaries. Do you want to confine your strikes within the parameters agreed between the unions and the bosses? Look at what the logistics workers have done in the past few days, look at what the truck drives have done in the past years, the transport workers and loads of other workers who do not work in factories. You have nothing to teach anyone, in fact you have a lot to learn from all of us. You want to defend your job, your salary, your family? You should be ready to fight with more than just the police. You don’t want to? Goodbye salary, goodbye family*.

Lets face up to it, as comrades, starting from real practices of conflict, not from the pantomime of unionists that want to stand in European elections. Don’t tell us that we used you as shields yesterday because you were completely safe from the clashes, the attacks we received and sent back. Don’t repeat the bullshit that Landini says about us “using” your march. We organised ours a long time before and would have had it anyway, with or without you, like we have done a thousand other times. So don’t worry. Don’t worry about us students and precarious in the streets: worry about what Camusso* said in the midst of thousands of fired workers in Terni* yesterday: that she is waiting for a solution from Industry. Don’t fear us, your comrades, who belong to the same class as you, who like you sell their labour power. And don’t fear either the police who defend the ministers, because they are scared of you like they are scared of us. Even more, they fear us talking to each other. Fear whoever tells you, in this conflict (even in these fictional conflicts they announce), that you should be spectators, be neutral, put up with all the misery the bosses never cease to pile on you.

 

The precarious, students, the young in the streets against the conference (where there will be teargas)

 

Notes from the translator

*FIOM is Italy’s national metalworkers union.

*The 18 October 2014 was a day of demonstration against a conference held centre of Turin to discuss the employment situation in Italy.

*Maurizio Landini is the secretary of FIOM.

*The Suza Valley is the site of the long-running NOTAV struggle against the construction of a high-speed train line between Turin and Leon.

*Chiamparino is the ex-mayor or Turin and the current president of Piemonte. Marchionneis is the chief executive of FIAT Crysler.

*Hello communism!

*Camusso is the general secretary of the CGIL, the larger union of which  FIOM is part.

*Terni is a small city in the centre of Italy.