Before it's too late

by Maria Matteo

There are those who die on the road, those on a construction site without protection.

L
Migration from south to north of the planet are a hub of civilization and an open challenge to the reasons of those who lies in the center are tired of modernity, the crossroads of ideas and practices where the autonomy of politics from religion has tried to achieve the universal "Human" of freedom, solidarity, equality.
The universalism of reason has crumbled in the face of a thousand reasons to those who could / would not huddle in the universal, formally neutral, but essentially masculine, western, white, heterosexual, wealthy. The sovereign citizen, entitled to rights and protections, and freedom.
Challenges posed by the thousands who exceeded the norm, splitting the edge, took apart piece by piece the formal artifice that was the basis of the liberal approach, exposing its root class, the patriarchal core, hierarchical. The conflicts resulting from it have gone through the last two hundred years. The struggles of women, workers, homosexuals have undermined the system, although this has proved flexible enough to stand up, changing and rearranging fractures to his "internal". Nothing lasting, because the protection of private property, considered a "human" rights is incompatible with any hypothesis of substantial equality. Nevertheless, the real democracy has been able to maintain a balance of war in the struggle between capital and labor. The balance has been enshrined in legislation by the compromises that were the mirror of force - as well as the weakness - of social opposition.
Similarly, the broadening of "citizenship", while it has granted rights, in part, however, has absorbed the subversive movement of women and homosexuals.
Immigration from the south to the north of the planet has opened a front in the war that disrupts the cards, breaking the front of the class struggle while undermining the same protection of formal freedom.
The immigration of foreign workers from poor countries, where survival is a kind of Russian roulette, is a powerful lever with which, in Europe - but not only - has been launched an unprecedented attack on the "rights" acquired by workers in decades of very hard struggle.

In recent years the horizon of the war between the poor, between those who have - still - those rights and not ones who have never had them - has overshadowed that of class warfare.
The universalism of rights denied to immigrants back into fashion when, from the bottom of the barrel, it revives the dried up plant of the clash of civilizations, the holy war, of ferocious Saladin and his hordes.
So it is that inequality is just the consensus from those that do not know what it is true equality.
Lumps identity unresolved gather in front of others, to the newcomers. Enemies. A country that has never come to terms with its terrible colonial legacy, seduced by the myth of the Italians good people, finds again without embarrassment the junk culture that supports and feeds the hatred.
But not only.
The freedom of women is the lever on which to push for fanning the flames of conflict between democratic civilization and Islamic obscurantism. The honor crimes against women and girls unavailable to patriarchal rules provide an opportunity for hardened xenophobic campaigns. The newspapers slamming in the front page the news of women killed by relatives who want to submit to the force. But no protection is given to women victims of violence and abuse. Few know the story of Faith. The Italian government has denied her political asylum. Faith, a girl ran away to Italy after killing the man who tried to rape her, was deported to Nigeria, where she could be hanged.
The freedom of women is a flag to wave in the circumstances. Such as the universality of rights. The grotesque mask of real democracy. This does not betray anything, but because it betrays itself, revealing, giving shape to the heart that is black.
Made of walls. Increasingly, thicker and higher. On these walls are broken the lives of those fleeing war, persecution, misery. There are those who die on the road, who at a construction site without protection, who hangs himself to avoid deportation. A long state massacre. There Is here who lives working as nobody was forced to work since a long time. They are the new slaves.
What we forget is that too many walls and chains that gather on the immigrants could gather one day around each of us. But then it will be too late.

 

Des anarchismes et des anarchistes
au XXIe siècle

de Marianne Enckell

Le monde « se couvre d’associations volontaires pour l’étude, pour l’instruction, pour l’industrie et le commerce, pour la science, l’art et la littérature, pour l’exploitation et pour la résistance à l’exploitation, pour l’amusement et pour le travail sérieux, pour la jouissance et pour l’abnégation, pour tout ce qui fait la vie de l’être actif et pensant […], et toutes cherchent, en maintenant l’indépendance de chaque groupe, cercle, branche ou section, à se fédérer, à s’unir, par-dessus les frontières aussi bien que dans chaque nation, à couvrir toute la vie du civilisé d’un réseau dont les mailles s’entrecroisent et s’enchevêtrent. Leur nombre se chiffre déjà par dizaines de mille […] Partout ces sociétés empiètent déjà sur les fonctions de l’État et cherchent à substituer l’action libre des volontaires à celle de l’État centralisé. […]
Et lorsqu’on constate les progrès qui s’accomplissent dans cette direction, malgré et contre l’État, qui tient à garder la suprématie qu’il avait conquise pendant ces trois derniers siècles; lorsqu’on voit comment la société volontaire envahit tout et n’est arrêtée dans ses développements que par la force de l’État, on est forcé de reconnaître une puissante tendance, une force latente de la société moderne. Et on a droit de se poser cette question: Si d’ici cinq, dix ou vingt ans — peu importe — les travailleurs révoltés réussissaient à briser ladite société d’assurance mutuelle entre propriétaires, banquiers, prêtres, juges et soldats ; si le peuple devient maître de ses destinées pour quelques mois et met la main sur les richesses qu’il a créées et qui lui appartiennent de droit — cherchera-t-il vraiment à reconstituer à nouveau cette pieuvre, l’État? ou bien, ne cherchera-t-il pas plutôt à s’organiser du simple au composé, selon l’accord mutuel et les besoins infiniment variés et toujours changeants de chaque localité, pour s’assurer la possession de ces richesses, pour se garantir mutuellement la vie et produire ce qui sera trouvé nécessaire à la vie? » (Pierre Kropotkine, L’Anarchie, sa philosophie, son idéal, 1896).
Le XXe siècle, dont les historiens disent volontiers qu’il a débuté en 1917, s’est terminé au cours de sa dernière décennie. La chute du Mur de Berlin suivie de la débandade des régimes du « socialisme réel » a vite été suivie d’autres phénomènes, l’internet, la rébellion zapatiste et les mouvements antiglobalisation. Alors le monde « s’est couvert d’associations volontaires » et les groupes anarchistes ont essaimé partout. Les bénédictins des pages jaunes anarchistes (http://ayp.subvert.info) en ont trouvé dans quelque 80 pays; Kropotkine, un siècle auparavant, ne parlait que de l’Europe.
Cette présence quasi universelle se caractérise par une grande ressemblance dans les comportements: les jeunes anarchistes sont encapuchonné-e-s, ouvrent des centres sociaux autogérés, font de la musique (souvent punk) et lancent des cailloux, ne mangent pas de viande, vivent en communautés à la ville ou à la campagne, défendent les sans-papiers. Regardez les photos des Philippines ou de Grèce, les programmes des concerts en Equateur ou en Estonie, les sites internet de Suède ou de Slovénie…
Certains courants s’en démarquent toutefois. Il s’agit aujourd’hui du courant dit « plateformiste », représenté dans le portail international anarkismo.net (et fort actif sur a-infos.ca), qui publie des textes sérieux en une quinzaine de langues.
Il s’agit par ailleurs des intellectuel-le-s tenants du « post-anarchisme », surtout anglo-saxons, dont plusieurs textes ont été traduits en italien chez Elèuthera, notamment.
Il y a toujours, bravant la répression, les anarcho-syndicalistes – certain-e-s votent, d’autres ne votent pas – et les syndicalistes révolutionnaires des IWW, et quelques fédérations d’importance très variable selon les pays ; elles n’ont de tradition qu’en France, en Italie, en Espagne et en Argentine, avec des différences de structures et de fonctions qui ne semblent pas insurmontables.
Et toutes les opérations combinatoires sont possibles ; les rencontres se font dans les manifs, parfois dans les campings, mais surtout dans les salons du livre, les colloques et commémorations, les revues toujours nombreuses (et fréquemment, nous le constatons au CIRA, durables et de bonne teneur).
Ce tableau à grands coups de pinceau est peu nuancé. L’important à mon sens est la présence diffuse ou affirmée d’anarchistes jeunes et vieux sur le terrain social et politique délaissé par les forces traditionnelles de la gauche qui n’en finissent pas de ramasser les miettes de leur passé sans réussir à en faire même un petit pain.

Pëtr Kropotkin

Anarchists and anarchism in the XXI century

The world is covered in the study of voluntary associations, education, industry and trade, science, art and literature, for the exploitation and resistance to exploitation, for fun and serious work, for the joy and self-denial, for all that makes life being active and thinking [...], and all seek to maintain the independence of each group, circle or section of a federation: to unite, beyond the borders as well as in each nation, covering the entire life of civilized man with a net, the mesh intersect and merge more and more. Their number is estimated to have tens of thousands [...]. Everywhere these companies usurp the functions of the state and try to replace the free action of volunteers to that of the centralized state. [...] And when it is noted the progress being done in this direction, in spite of and against the state, which has an interest in preserving the rule that has won the last three centuries, and when he sees it as a voluntary society invades everything and is not stopped in its development that the strength of the state, they are obliged to recognize a powerful tendency, a latent force in modern society. And you have the right to ask the question: If in five, ten or twenty years - it does not matter - the workers were able to break the rebel mutual aid societies among owners, bankers, priests, judges and soldiers, and if the people become the master of his fate for a few months and put his hand on the wealth that created and that rightfully belong to him, will really try to rebuild again this octopus, the state? Or rather he does not try to organize from the simple to the compound, according to mutual agreement and needs different and infinitely more variations of each locality, to secure possession of wealth, to secure life and each other to produce what will be necessary for life? ". (Pyotr Kropotkin, "Anarchism his philosophy, his ideal," Bertoni, Geneva 1901.)
The twentieth century, about which historians often argue it began in 1917, was completed in the last decade of the century itself. The fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the collapse of the regimes of "real socialism" was soon followed by other phenomena, such as the Internet, the Zapatista uprising and the movement against globalization. Then the world was covered with voluntary associations, and anarchist groups have begun to swarm everywhere.
Thanks to the painstaking work of those who make the yellow pages anarchist (http://ayp.subvert.info), have found in some eighty countries, Kropotkin, a century before, he spoke only of Europe. The almost universal presence is characterized by a great similarity of behavior: young anarchists wearing hoods, fund self-administered centers, making music (often punk) and throwing stones, do not eat meat, live in community, in a city or campaign, defending illegal immigrants. Look at the pictures of Greece or the Philippines, concert programs in Ecuador or in Estonia, the websites of Sweden or Slovenia ...
However, some trends can be distinguished from them. Today, for example, we find that the current "platform", represented on the international portal http://anarkismo.net (and very active on a-infos.ca), which publishes serious texts in a dozen languages. This is the other part of intellectuals who advocate the "postanarchism" are mainly Anglo-Saxon, and some of their texts have been translated into Italian, mainly from Eleuthera.
There are always, in defiance of the crackdown, anarcho-syndicalists - some voted, others do not vote - and the revolutionary syndicalists of the IWW, rather than some federations whose importance varies considerably from country to country, and these have only a tradition in France, Italy, Spain and in Argentina, with differences in the structures and functions, which do not seem insurmountable.
Any combination operations are possible, the meetings take place at events, sometimes in camps, but especially with the book fairs, during interviews and commemorations, and in magazines more numerous (and often, as we see at the CIRA, durable and of good quality).
This general picture is slightly blurred. The important thing to me, is the widespread or established presence of anarchists, young and old on the social and political ground abandoned by forces of the traditional left, which never fail to pick up the crumbs from their past, unable to even make a sandwich.

(translation from French by Luisa Cortese)

 

 

On the brink of a Nervous Breakdown

by Mariella Bernardini

We create more conflict, without underestimating the sexist language and the interference of the church.

Today it seems increasingly clear that within the conflict between the sexes, never choked, they try to restore virility and a return to traditional sex roles, data that had been under discussion for 40 years of feminism. Today as never before relations between the sexes are at the heart of politics. Groped to take the floor as had been done in the past about sexuality - I think that power and politics is an essential step to start. It is some time that women more and more "beautiful", gaudy, fake or some really stupid, and women increasingly harassed and subject to acts of violence are part of our everyday life. The representation that is more - and unfortunately, women themselves often lend themselves to it - is to bodies that can be modified, and offered just like any other tradable commodity. The aspirations of freedom of women in recent years have been commodified and we sold an imaginary plastic with no distinction between what is real and lived by each day and what is mass media fiction.
The strong contradictions always present between the sexes too often explicits in violence, sometimes invisible, like the one that you live every day, psychological, domestic, namely the one that involves the body and mind. Do not feel surprised but anger is not a day goes by when a woman is not used violence: this is an ancient men practice and does not depend on the passport of the person who acts, and has always been used as a weapon of war of an army against another army (Just remember the hundreds of thousands of women raped near us here in the former Yugoslavia, not to mention what is happening today in the world); long years of silence are often hidden under the ashes that these crimes only after the feminist revolution of the 70 were subjected to social criticism in a strong and relevant way.
Now that the economic and social crisis is more devastating to large numbers of people come to light and will grow ever more authoritarian and sexist views, the fear of the different feelings sexual phobia and sexism are intertwined and they mingle with the Racism and further mistrust, isolation, competition, social exclusion and destructiveness in human relations.
It is an alien the enemy, removing the guilt for our own boys who try to put "their women" under protection, wanting to return the difference of women, born under the sign of freedom, into submission. Rape, which I consider a political crime against women, against the 'different' body of women, against non-erasable part of its difference, is used politically by different forces party that support and set up patrols of executioners and military bands to always remove more freedom to everybody. Perhaps for too long we have allowed them to talk about too many things in our name, but we can no longer afford it and if it is true that we have never been silent, we must now raise our voice more strongly because the assertion of our freedom is a prerequisite for the affirmation of the freedom of all humanity.
We create more conflict, not to overlook the sexist language that emerges and the ever present interference of the church in our lives (see the case of Eluana Englaro).
The breaking of the women's movement of recent decades, its many streams, the different di/visions and drifts, have left large gaps in the common objectives and actions, we feel more than ever the necessity of thought, resumption of a "new" movement, of relationships, of enhancement of skills and knowledge for an effective reading of the changes to take place in the world. Starting afresh by new generations, from schools, to create an egalitarian and libertarian culture, without distinction of roles and not sexist, and jobs not to marginalize us with rising unemployment because we are the main victims (as in our country works less of one in two women and this is one of the lowest figures in Europe). Turn over the world, improve our ability to relate and find the intertwining between us, the culture and nature in our ongoing daily practice of resistance, autonomy and freedom.

 

 

Strong emotions
and incoercible passions

by Massimo Ortalli

A new generation of historians has been formed over the years, producing a remarkable scientific literature.

IThe progress of historical research has led in recent years to studies that have focused not only on the mere investigation and reconstruction of events of major historical events and their dynamics, but also, and not secondarily, on the analysis of that human and social capital tissue that to such events gave concrete substance. In consequence of this change in perspective both the individual as social groups have acquired new importance, opening the reflections of scholars to new motivations, instincts and values.
The history of anarchism, even more than that of other social movements, has also been, if not more, a story of values, ideals, strong emotions and incoercible passions. But for years the official history, not only on the side of almost hegemonic Marxist but also on the side of the liberal or Catholic school setting, has consistently ignored, in a sort of materialistic frenzy, all causes that did not find an economistic explanation, writing such a story, essentially one-dimensional. Inevitably, in this view, a strict interpretation of the importance of anarchism and libertarian thought in the history of the country.
Enough to understand an example, the adventure of the band Cafiero and Malatesta in the mountains of Matese, a desperate quest of poor deluded unaware of the material conditions of the country and isolated from the urban proletariat, or the expression of a feeling of revolt and equality of generation of revolutionaries who brought the word of emancipation in the most remote lands? The emergence of a ridiculous and self-destructive wishful thinking, or a cry for freedom that, soon after, would become the patrimony of the Italian proletariat? An application is not difficult but long unanswered, for which so much historians, if they had taken off the blinders, would find a clear answer in the actual process of Benevento, resolved, as we know, with the apotheosis of the popular band of "dreamers".
In recent years, however, in the face of the inevitable crisis of some militant historiography, the study of the anarchist movement has received new stimuli, which led to fruitful and full appreciation of its importance. If of this revision has been a forerunner of Pier Carlo Masini, already on the pages of "Movimento Operaio" helped to unearth and restore their rightful place at the First International and the "juvenile" phase of the Italian anarchism, after him, other historians have helped to dispel the materialistic vulgate and instrumental and restrictive interpretations that it fosters.
A new generation of historians has emerged over the years, producing a remarkable scientific literature. This is attested by the relatively short but intense and valuable experience of the "Historical Review of Anarchism" led, as the conclusion of a long process of research, work that has virtually no equal in the scientific world, that "Biographical Dictionary of Italian anarchists" which bear witness, among many other things, the renewed interest of the anarchists for their history, both human and material wealth of a movement so long-lived and ubiquitous as the anarchist.
And "A Review", of course, is among the protagonists of this renewal. Always on time, in fact, to inform on new acquisitions of the research, allows a much wider and heterogeneous audience than that of specialists to monitor the progress of the studies, not only with reviews and bibliographic records, but also with an interest in biographical events of our activists or with frequent recurrences of the chronicles of our history. A precious balance between the magazine and its readers, then. On the one hand a very useful informative effort, the other a response to constant stimuli needed to continue to take forward the commitment in society: the awareness of being part of a vision that transcends the individual individuality to become a unitary proceeding and collectively. So, once again ... we come from far and away we go ...

 

Our country
is the whole world

by Massimo Varengo

Self-government, municipalism, federalism, libertarianism, are no longer exclusive assets of a residual motion, but themes of reflection for a possible political action.

It is open from some time the search for effective responses to the dramatic increasing of the social question characterized by a massive economic crisis as well as by a series of regional conflicts, ethnic, religious, in profound conjunction with the emergence of the political attack on the standard of living, income, health, the popular classes and the redefinition of the system of world domination. To the left looking for some recipes in a humanitarian outdated liberalism out any possibility, other studies to revive the role of national governments to ensure a renewed pact between capital and labor. But the centralization of decision-making processes, the circulation of huge masses of capital, the disruption of national economies, the reduction in the powers of individual states, the sheer size of the current financial crisis does not make these options credible. Not by chance is in the mature content of anarchism today that the most lively, most critical of the society is seeking, consciously or unconsciously, materials for building the possible future.
Self-government, municipal, federal, libertarianism, are no longer the exclusive patrimony of a residual motion, but themes of reflection for possible political action. And in that anarchists, while a minority, they prove to be, internationally, living part of a cultural, political and social battle, which is measured with existing problems to develop workable solutions that can open new spaces of freedom and new conditions of equality. Important signs of recovery activities and incisiveness are given virtually anywhere in the world, from the anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist protests at the summits of the major world leaders up to the demonstrations against the raging current of the disastrous effects of the crisis on classes popular.
From Seattle to Athens the black and red thread runs continuously, passing through Russia, where the criminalization and punishment does not prevent the anarchists to continue to work hard against the growing racism and Nazism, in Mexico, where in Chiapas and Oaxaca are experiencing major initiatives of popular self-government and more generally throughout Latin America where an increasing number of initiatives developed in virtually every country, even in Cuba where there are important signs of recovery. And even in Europe, despite the complexity and the scattering of the movement, the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist, there were significant numbers of events, both theoretical and practical, in social movements. Other important signs of development from Turkey, Senegal, South Africa, Indonesia, from the joint Israeli-Palestinian struggle against the Wall. The time is ripe for a specific task, taking into account the richness and particularity of each individual situation, is able to compare, in mutual recognition, paths and options that have common roots and purpose, for a joint and collective growth.

 

Historiography:
an open budget

by Maurizio Antonioli

Those two conferences of studies: in Piombino on unionism and on revolutionary Bakunin in Venice.

It may seem strange that, after forty years of abundant studies and research on topics related to the history of anarchism, I hesitate in the face of the request of Paolo Finzi to draw a sort of historiographical balance on the issue. Perhaps because the budgets, or rather the actual, albeit temporary, you do when you plan to close a season that seems to me, however, still open for the thousands of possibilities of analysis that are offered. Of course, in the last fifteen years the historiographical production on anarchism (I refer of course to the Italian one) has accelerated significantly, mainly due to two large-scale collective experiences of "the history of anarchism Magazine" and the biographical dictionary of the Italian anarchists. But it was probably, and I hope that is the case, the initial impetus that can be required to ensure autonomy and new and more specific explorations. It is no coincidence that they are already out or about to being developed regional dictionaries (Abruzzo, Calabria, Sicily and others) that can offer us a clearer and closer, a more detailed picture of the complex of human affairs that gave body and I would almost say "soul" to the Italian anarchist movement.
But if it is true that the experiences mentioned were decisive, it is equally true that they are grown on land already made fertile by the results of an historiographical production by no means negligible. I do not have the space to make a brief review and would risk, as often happens, to forget something or someone. I will limit myself to remember a person and then two events. A person can only be that old friend Pier Carlo Masini, two events the conferences that I think crucial for several reasons, the conference of Piombino on syndicalism (1974) and the conference in Venice on Bakunin (1976).
As we all recall, the first volume of Masini's history of the Italian anarchists (the one subtitled From Bakunin to Malatesta) was released in early 1969, before Piazza Fontana, and caused, for contingent reasons easy to understand, a lot of interest. It was inserted in a cultural climate in which anarchists, after years of silence and marginalization, were somehow back on top. The great merit of Masini, who for years, gathering material and publishing essays and contributions, was the time to understand and grasp knowledge. But it's not just intuition, which never hurts. Masini had the ability to compose the painting of a crucial three decades of national history, from the very next day of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy to the birth of the Socialist Party, and to present it with the eyes of the scholar certainly animated by a strong streak of sympathy, but away from the harshness of ideology that had characterized, in one way or another, the historiography of the fifties and sixties. The Masini lesson, that not all recognized, can be summed up in his ability to understand the whole, to follow the individual events by inserting them into a coherent unit. So to understand Bakunin and Malon, Cafiero and Bignami, Malatesta, and Costa, Gori and Turati. The heated passions were softened, while not losing their vitality, their specificity. But in the context of young Italian workers' movement, which painstakingly sought its own identity through the contrast of the trends for Masini the rights and wrongs intertwined and there was no space for the category of "treason" or that of the "provocation". The traitors, the provocative, if there were, were others.
As for the events, I will only record that the conference on Piombino began for once to put the emphasis on a phenomenon, that of revolutionary syndicalism, which until then had become rough justice. I'll do one example. All studies in which the revolutionary syndicalism had made his first appearance never cited "The Internationale", the journal of the Trade Union of Parma, which became organ of the USI. And USI remained in a nebula vaguely knew existed, but that aside, it preferred to follow the equation revolutionary syndicalism = interventionism = fascism. The deepening of trade unionism of direct action has had two major consequences: on the one hand it has significantly enriched the framework of the Italian trade union movement, it also highlighted the complex relationships between trade unionists and anarchists. Otherwise, the Venice conference on Bakunin, thematically more limited but open to the contribution of different disciplinary and methodological approaches, has started a season of fruitful international collaborations, contributing significantly to "de-provincialize" the libertarian Italian culture. For the first time we, the younger, we were next to Lehning, Maitron Guérin, Arvon and we could deal with them. Now that the younger are the others, there remains the memory.

 

We, the desaparecidos
of the same city

by Milena Magnani

The truth is that we are in the places of tyranny.

Here they drunk us with padanie (rference to the Northern League goal of a separate Po river Italian region, ndr), of measures to be taken to combat savage enemies, but I fear that we are concealing evidence that fanfare that instead we should pay attention, and is the phenomenon that is transforming the European cities into a single same city.
The city is nothing but an equal part of the city, and aseptic serial, a way of building and planning that is colonizing gradually all other areas and is fully functional to the logic of high finance and big business.
I walk in there. I go through them for highways, for motorways, I park in underground car parks, organized by sector. In its relentless expansion, the city makes the same character of the old streets and forced to succumb to make room for large chain Carefour and Ikea, the fast moving lines, the big squares of access to multiplexes.
The landscape is so evenly shared by all European cities, planning to become a demonstration of how Europe of multinationals has a relapse on our lives and has the ability to create geographies.
A scenario so elegantly authoritarian able gradually to settle for relapse even the streets of city centers and even prevent the survival of any small and honest business. Bridges and fittings, escalators and moving walkways, it could be anywhere in the western world so much, what we experience in any case, the usual array of invitations but are not limited to the purchase.
Not by chance here, in the same city, the feeling of citizenship will disappear, it loses some of the clues recognizable story, and becomes the chosen site for the depersonalization.
So it happens that when I'm in this type of scenario I do not feel any bond of territorial belonging and sometimes even try to ask: Where are we?
The truth is that we are in the places of tyranny, whose power, as John Berger suggests, is structured yet widespread, is dictatorial, yet anonymous, omnipresent but without connotation of place ... And maybe that's why more and more often when I proceed with my shopping cart between the platforms, there where I miss the coordinates to find the idea of life that I wanted to live, comes over me a yearning for a more rudimentary model of the city, the one that expressed a difference between the center and its suburbs, in which I could still go and see two friends Roma, in the district on the Reno promenade, which now the bulldozers have demolished.
I return to that sense of lightheartedness that made me stand on the steps of a hut, smoking cigarettes on the drains. And I also wonder if it is not appropriate to find the threads of a disobedience, the disobedience that can return only a force, and of which I experienced there, next to people who lived on the margins, who had nothing except their freedom to escape, to reach relatives in the midst of other landfills, to search for new warehouses of industrial waste.
I do not intend to do a eulogy of marginality, but rather consider here, where I feel respected my freedom to think, that I refuse to live there. Where with a credit card rubbed at the checkout, we only smooth the path on which columns of refugees will start with the plastic bags in hand, people who emigrate permanently and will continue to leave the country because they do not live in the birthplace of the great capital.

 

 

The letter from the passion

by Monica Giorgi

“A” is (was) compelling framework and how to express a slight particle of truth to the things of the world.

So it was that I became aware of an encyclopedic injustice: some letters were most interesting of their neighbors. The most exciting was the letter A: was because of its black color, highlighted by Rimbaud? Or that power overwhelming was simply the energy of the incipit? Amélie Nothom

“A” is always (has been) a landing place for me. In both directions a bit 'lopsided to one another, landing place and the banks in dealing with the excesses of the most unreliable things in the world - the sea ... Sea of life, they say. And it's a good saying, as well as an unknown well-said.
There is always a margin in the things of the world of conflict and even the most compelling relationships, such as my history with A and those living with the people that are busy around it , do not evade this law.
That the conflict is an impasse not to resolve, a gap not filled. Both operations are too harsh for the intellect, mocked - so to speak - from the same order of discourse. It then dismissed the links for supporting something that is not to blame, the passion comes to the rescue of the incarnated word. It is not to exonerate the guilty, but because the conflict impoverishes me that I'm going to contemplate and I see it, for those with special relations to history with A, as the seed corn for their daily bread.
The conflict of love is friendship neighbor whose pleasures are multiplied by the fruits of solitude. Yeah right, and loneliness. Solidarity and Solitude share the same root. Goes to the valleys and mountains, the love. It is left to look for results from: castaway from stormy reception and exile. If love does not let you ever find of all - it's lacking even the intimacy of close combat - you have to admit being in full love in the season of life.
For me, the magazine has limited the surface area of the public body to body with writing. I'm telling the past, but I write this in evoking the image of a polygon inscribed in a circle. I try to express the mathematical approximation of an irrational number that has infinite value, as thinking and writing in close proximity to the experiences of life always keep a tight margin of incommensurability.
I approached the magazine first to establish, by the creature who now forty i(n)spires soul and body, a relationship among the most intense, if not the most intense: the link itself binding yet absolutely free from any kind of formal regularity.
With A long silence with no shortage of restituted pre-monitors, in a sort of exchange meditated on the edge of the words, earnings that are symbolic to the quid pro quo. The alphabet of life is dictated to the rear and the memory is needed because of neglect.
I mean the melee with writing in two dimensions: what is achieved by interweaving the creative biography traces, both as literal signs spelling system in which the human is immersed, which enables the handling of plot and apparatus to consider the effect- agent of each narrative.
So as not to recognize A and its boundary circle by the living place of free-received when stationed in a deep state of need?
Defined and supported to live in that particular story that led me to know arrest, imprisonment, condemnation and renewed freedom, enriched by the friendship-love that has not stopped to the "due" solidarity among anarchists, I realized that life events are in such a way that the most precious gifts arise from the most precarious situations. It is a certainty that darkens and lights that spark.
A is (was) scope and compelling way of expressing a light particle of truth to the things of the world: Journal of movement and moving documentary tradition of high moral value. Light mode since the occurrence of any determinations of action exceed the powers that be - "friendship [with God] does not give any power, but as long as there is truth in the thoughts of men, no power reaches the earth's stability," warns Simone Weil; compelling context as the word embodied the power of the body breathes revealing at the same time instituting power and liberating power. It is the linguist Émile Benveniste in the Dictionary of Indo-European institutions to take philologically present the two plans.
I know I tried a taste ecstatic vaguely interweaving Love and Anarchy "together their letters in a kind of absurd Cartesian plane, so that A intersect of one and the same place where they take different courses. I know I learned from there that the bonds of the issue are more compelling than those of addictive ...

 

 

Responsibility
of the word

by Nadia Agustoni

In addition to piety, they have forgotten shame and responsibility of the words.

I spent years of my life too tied in a dark cave convinced that the shadows on the walls that this had changed. Titos Patrikios, Cave

I
Our present is infected. There is an evil that is imposed everywhere, at every social stratum, in every geographical location: it is the lack of piety.
From the comment the fact of the day, to the most trivial events, what arises is the chatter above and condemnation which it claims. Condemnation also when it absolves because it is the fault of the victim and justifies those who do harm to others with or without cause. The reasons, moreover, are the list of self-interest of the powerful and those who imitate them. The reasons are the most infected of their speeches. But someone has repeated ad nauseum the litany of "everything is relative."
So they called heroes, the Taliban, who have human only the hands that cut noses, amputate and stoning and throwing gas into schools for girls. Call victims of obscure weaknesses rapists and traffickers of human lives, because the bodies of our fellow human beings, which they endeavor to serve on the roads male and female Italian complacent warrants, and serve in areas where the Italian citizens no longer want to work . These abused lives are not worthy of pity. A real pity and attention we would require other styles of thinking and behavior.
But now in the name of relativism we expect to erase from history the facts that some would define, although documented and verified, only unfortunate incidentsand others consider pure propaganda: by those who deny the Holocaust to those who give ingrate to the workers who expose the wrongdoing. Because in the end the evil that we are gripped by comes from a thought that is in addition to the pity that has forgotten the shame and responsibility of words.

Signorina anarchia. photo di Gah° http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaia_d/

 

 

“Puu-tii-uuit?”,
or the silence that screams

by Nicoletta Vallorani

After a massacre, everything should be quiet, and indeed it is, always.

Who does the teacher by profession, and has done throughout his adult life, does not have a great deal of familiarity with the silence, in the sense that it happens rarely to enjoy it. If he's good, he learns hate a kind who goes by the name of silent indifference, and to love another one: the absence of rare species of entries in a classroom crowded that is kidnapped silence.
I was a teacher all my adult life. In high school, I experienced question silences, sermon-silences, torpor-silences, rainy day silences and so on. As a rule, I preferred the fertile chaos of the discussion, but there were limited numbers and rarely I happened to have in class that students would not have even wanted to share with me the same time zone. I was lucky, I guess. In college, however, working with large numbers and in classrooms endless as continents in war. Years ago, early in my academic career, I happened to have an over crowded course. I taught English and worked on the rhetoric of the news reports of war.
Times were complicated, and we did not go better since then: in 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq, intent on bringing peace with mortar fire. There was much talk of missions to support civilians, and while civilians were dyeing as flies, caught in the flypaper of a conflict.
In this beautiful setting, I selected pages of the newspaper and I suggested a couple of hundred students, all together, starting from the hypothesis that one could learn more about the English vocabulary by analyzing the mysterious tangle in the newspapers there proposed the star of international politics. And once I took to classroom an article on the "cluster bombs": multiple bombs in the first place in the hit parade of random carnage of war. Technically, the lesson had to do with the distinction between denotative meaning (eg chair = chair the object that the term means) and connotative meaning (eg chair = tool that I can rest when I'm tired). The fact is that we talked about chairs, but cluster bombs. So, I was showing pictures of cluster bombs (= denotative meaning of the term "cluster bomb"), then move on to describe, with the same wealth of images, the unpleasant side effects that produce cluster bombs on an Iraqi child that, for example, collects a nice yellow unexploded cylinder, begins to play all cheering until at one point it decides to explode. And the child jumps in the air: and this is precisely the denotative meaning.
I must admit - in my merit or on my defense - that I was right on the possible reaction of two hundred young thinking heads that I was before, and who performed in one of the most profound and unsettling silences in my professional life. Not a fly flew. I asked if they understood.
From the back of the little voice of a girl with red hair - thin and serious and full of piercings, said, in a clean and musical English, the gist of the whole lesson. It was practically a declaration of rejection of war in the most outlandish rhetoric joint basted by politicians who - their goodness - in war don't go. That girl has since graduated, and like many others - perhaps with a little more awareness - has entered the adult world.
And that day, have left that room, I think that have left at least 20 students who have understood a basic concept. Which is what Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse # 5, "There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. It is assumed that all are dead, and no longer have to say anything or want anything. After a massacre, everything should be quiet, and indeed it is, always, except for birds. What the birds say? Everything you need to say about a massacre, things like "Puu-tii-uuit?".

All Translations by Enrico Massetti ("The other Fabrizio" + "Pinelli-Piazza Fontana")