Between Roma and Val Susa

Stones, shears and carousels
by Maria Matteo

Viewed from the Susa Valley, Rome seems far away. Chronicles from the front and considerations of a No-TAV that in Rome was not on October 15. And here is why.

 

Giaglione, October 23. It is the day of "cutting the nets," non-violent direct action against the nets of the fort of La Maddalena. I walked the path of George dozens of times, and each time was different: today the mist envelops the gold and copper in the autumn trees, blurring the boundaries. From this balcony you can see the net, with distant lights that illuminate the fierce barbed wire of the area occupied by the police. Here waiting for the arrival of the procession. Just five months have passed since the first attack on the Magdalene. So much water has passed under the bridges of Dora from May, when the sound of chainsaws the rhythm of that first night of barricades. From that day we were always at the track. Thousand of resistance initiatives, information, struggle. Sometimes all, sometimes few, sometimes less sometimes believe. For months the No Tav besiege the fort. There were the nights broken by the roar of bombs and paper firecrackers, drowned in the smoke of tear gas and walks through the vineyards closed by barbed wire. There was Turi shaft and the guys who cut the fences, there were the stones at police and tear gas shells in people's faces. There were all those walks and assaults of those who wanted and could not. There was and is a popular movement that does not scare or from police violence, or assault by the media, nor by the complaints and arrests. There is a movement that questions day after day and try to make these choices, not always successfully, to walk a road shared by most.

The risk of fear

The week between Rome on October 15 and October 23 Valsusa has been a long week. Very long. On October 15 of outraged Rome has projected his shadow here in the valley. According to the Minister of the No Tav trained ones that the press called "Black Bloc". Maroni announced that violent people from all over Italy have gathered in the woods of Chiomonte. The outcome of the day is already taken for granted. Yet all the cards are on the plate: the movement has clearly announced its intentions to build a non-violent direct action day, or, if you prefer, of collective civil disobedience. All together, unarmed, it openly violating the law by cutting the nets. The purpose of government is clear: to try, once again, to break the movement, to divide it into good and bad, violent and nonviolent. This time they were to do it by a hair. Action, conceived as a gesture of rebellion explicit military occupation, in the speeches of some, both in the list is in the assembly tends to become a pressing components of moderate and capitiniane, towards other souls in motion, more likely to judge legitimate defense. Nothing too explicit, but it is a wind that blows annoying. However, the strongest risk and fear keep people away, that the threats of the minister, the announcement of new repressive measures have hit the mark. For miles around the fort is the red zone.

Nothing to prove

My wait is broken. It takes several hours to reach the hut. We have ten, maybe fifteen thousand, the people of the great occasions. Between us and the huts, to mark the boundary of the restricted area, there is a net placed there by the police in the hope that the movement is content to cut the net far away from the fort. But the No Tav cut and go on. In addition there is another jersey barrage of concrete and steel, guarded by armed men. From there you do not pass. We divide the paths. The lower one is steep, steep, dangerous. But you go, regardless of the cliff and prohibitions. On the bridge over the river Clarea there are dozens of police. Hundreds and hundreds of people wade the river, someone makes a human chain to help those in difficulty. The police, unlike the other times they are not in the barbed wire fence a few steps from the hut: they are out and are interposed between the No Tav and the net. The most pressing because you go back, content with the result. I agree: a movement that has openly violated the requirements of the police, forbidding any access to the cabin, a movement that has thrown the beaten track without fear from the troops of the state, a movement that became frightened by the Maroni threats and climate fell heavily after October 15, this movement has nothing to prove. The No TAV continue to be scary. So afraid that the next day the government, part of the draft of the "Decree development" of the transformation of Mary Magdalene in the fort site of strategic interest. A further militarization of the area. In the background is still a fact: non-violent tactics, the first problem - the police placed outside the net - has melted like snow in the sun. Those who had supported the key "non-violent" of the day have not been able to make operational their proposals. Yet it did not take long, a dozen people known to take the lead and a little 'of nerves. It was a symbolic gesture, but certain symbols, if lulled and evoked, they become powerful and can not be neglected. This end leaves a little 'bitter taste in my mouth, confirming the suspicion that for some, this day was a sort of watershed between the summer and fall of the stone cutters.

It's time to turn the page

On the way back I stop on the balcony of the first leg. The lights in the yard are not even more livid. The nets are still there. Were not enough stones and paper bombs, the shears are not served non-violent. The problem, the real difficulty is to really lobby the government and manufacturers. We can not continue to wait in the fort of Asterix, because that story is already written and bearing the mark of defeat. You do not win by force against those who have a legal monopoly, you do not win against armored vehicles, the lynx, the mountain, the paratroopers, policemen, police, the forest ... the whole military apparatus of the state against us. The popular movement, rooted, where old trails and paths alongside the young people, where children play in the village, drawing a world without nets and barbed wire, is a force that should not be lost, undone, in a game where all the cards the best is a swindler with a gun under the table. It's time to turn the page. We need a careful reflection, peaceful, involving all a bit. The movement is hard to know and define a strategy to go beyond the nets of the fort, as well as the shears and the stones, to pour into the streets, in the palaces of those who decide, in the general strike and block everything. Our strength is rooted folk might - once again - to a whole territory ungovernable.

another game

In Rome, the same old faces trying to leverage the widespread social malaise to bring a dowry to Bersani and future electoral coalition, the support of the squares indignant. Left and Freedom, Fiom, the Cobas aim to collect the inheritance of the PRC, as an opposition party and government. The post disobedient try to collect the populist wave, supporting and making IDV support. Who struggles to make ends meet, who knows that this is a precarious intrascendibile, the elderly who are denied a dignified life have nothing to gain in this game. An alternative course underworld friends to support cooperatives, community centers agreed to rent to maintain, saints in the parliament in case. The men and women in black, whose presence was announced on the walls of every city, they played their game: breaking the parade, using it while despising him. Probably hoping, unsuccessfully, to find imitators among young people angry. Let's be clear. Not sure I start to cry if someone breaks ATM or break the windows of corporals legalized if it is a general practice, shared popular. If, above all, is combined with the ability to place concrete bases, besides the ruins of this world, a world where every man woman and child is not the end of half. In Rome, this has not happened, nor was it reasonable to believe that could happen. The emancipation either is the work of the oppressed and exploited or not. The revolt, or from the suburbs where the crisis sinks its fangs, the territories in the fight against landfills and incinerators, working the fields where the new slaves, from ordinary people tired of paying for the war and the army, or is not. If not for protesters who attacked banks, supermarkets employment agencies have not won the sympathy of the other participants in the parade. This is a fact. But the most important and decisive is that they have been imitated. If the "revolt is contagious" mimesis of the revolt does not infect anyone. Likewise, the mimicry of the investment has nothing to do with the roots of the temporary but real experiences of autonomy by the institution. That autonomy, which limits and a thousand difficulties, we are experiencing in the No Tav movement in the Susa Valley are the institutions to be variable dependent on movements, not the other way. This is because the movement, if he sometimes uses them, however, did not let himself be conditioned.

The antiviolent choice

But Rome was something else. In Rome there were tens of thousands of people, disconnected from groups and organizations that have animated the square. People no longer willing to suffer, knowing that this system does not only produce oppression and misery, which is unreformable. People who recognize the slogan of "No debt", who thought that a square strong indignation could restore a real participatory process. The tactic of street crime in close Maroni has the desire to do so many guys like their peers in Tunis and Athens. When the police attacked the march, loaded with armored cars and at full speed, thousands have faced the tanks, often armed with bare hands or what were in the road, raised between the fury of the police and carabinieri and a square feared that the government was full of indignation that he could go beyond the intentions of much of the organizers. Deep indignation has prompted thousands of people trying to block the carousels. It makes you angry indignation in the face of legalized violence of the state. The bet is that these feelings do you act in the political and social places where people live every day. Continue to debate - endorsing or trying again - and stone cutters, paper bombs and cobblestones is useless and misleading. How misleading is the opposition between violence and nonviolence. In the difficult balance between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility, the choice seems to me the landing antiviolent more reasonable and humane. Fleeing the violence, the maximum expression of the denial of individual freedom and collective, is an attitude that I consider to be inseparable from my anarchist. Similarly, the defense against attacks is a painful but necessary practice, because often the lack of response becomes complicity. If October 15 was the mirror of a real movement, the radical and deep-rooted issues, including the method, would be others. No need to remember that the bad guys are always the men in uniform, paid to defend the social and political organization, based on violence, exploitation, oppression, denial of freedom and dignity. Who is in motion, those who pass libertarian voltage, supports and promotes self-management struggles, the direct participation, to broaden the front of who knows how to do and decide for yourself. Here is our strength. In Rome, in the Susa Valley, anywhere..