2009-06-27
“Seven winds in the lower calendars and geographies:
first wind, a worthy and angry youth”.
Subcomandante Marcos, Ezln, Chiapas, Mexico.
Message to the greek rebels on december 2008.
On July 8th, 9th and 10th the president-master of the italian government, Silvio Berlusconi, will host the summit of the “Big Eight” of the Planet. The summit will take place in the fortress of a State Police Corps, in Coppito, a town close to L’Aquila, a city where people and land are still devasted by the earthquake of the 6th of April 2009. The president moved there the summit from its original destination: a luxury liner off the sardinian coast of La Maddalena.
Due by the action of this arrogant governor, leader of a speculation and war system responsible for the crisis, is taking shape an attempt to validate again the failed global political governance. The situationist of reaction, Silvio Berlusconi, gives to the “Big” of the Planet the opportunity to perform a show of “sobrity”, as he called it. A show he would like to be appropriate to face the growing ostilities and rebellions rising in every corner of the World against the G8’s decisions and dominance.
Behind the pitiful cabaret – set up to take for a walk the highest political offices of the world, along the tent-camps of the earthquake’s victims – the summit will confirm those decisions and that dominance: to fund again the financial speculation; to save the banks; to make labour more precarious and instable; to reinforce the security architecture; to implement cooperation among Nations in the matter of repression; to keep on with the no-border exploitation of human beings and natural resources and to build up, at the same time, new frontiers of blood and shame, to appease universities through control and police.
The G8/G14/G21 is not just taking place on a scene devasted by an earthquake, whose consequences are worsened by speculation and social injustice, but it will be held in the middle of a global crisis, in a period of riots against oppressions bursting at different latitudes. From the Argentinazo to the revolt in El Alto, Bolivia; from the Appo, in Oaxaca, Mexico, to the resistance of indigenous people in Peruvian Amazonia; from the rebellions in the french banlieues to those of migrant people against the lagers they live in, and against the deportation systems that work in the buttres of European Union – as in Ceuta, Melilla, Peloponnese and Lampedusa; from the recent riots in Greece after the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos – 16 years old, shot dead by the police – to the protests against the G20 in London – where Ian Thomlison was murdered by the police too – until the night of the riots in Berlin, on the first of May, and the Nato meeting in Strasbourg.
The July appointment has been preceded in Italy by a sequence of campaigns, protests and marches addressed to the highest ministerial offices and to the lobbies that organized the G8. As in the cases of the summits on Agriculture and Environment; of the meeting organized by the chancellors in Torino – ended with a clash between the march of the students and the repressive police; of the encounter among the Ministers of Economy in Rome, on March 28th, welcomed by a demonstration of students, unions and flex workers that succeded in breaking the prohibition to access to the center of the city; of the actions on May 29th and 30th in Rome: the one against Oim, the symbolic occupation of churches, the contacts with the migrant people inside the Cie (centers of identification and deportation for immigrants) at Ponte Galeria, and the antiracist and antisecuritarian march that went all over the streets of the city, in line with the march in Milan a week before.
On the first of June a national meeting in L’Aquila launched a call-out for realizing an “extended mobilization” in the name of “radicality”against the G8. On june 21st, a following meeting drew up a calendar. Into this frame, the No-G8 network of Rome – a convergence of different movements of social struggle that organized the March and May actions reported above – proposes a “Welcoming Day for the Mighty of the Planet” on July the 7th, when the international deputations will pass through the italian capital. Moreover, the No-G8 network proposes to practice a “Map of the crisis”, through actions carried out by affinity groups. A “Map of the crisis” based on the one sperimented in London during the G20: decentralized actions in different cities during the days of the summit – in Italy, in Europe and in the countries belonging to the “Club of the Mighty”.
We, social activists, natives and migrants, flex workers, builders of indipendent ways of life, jealous of our sincere and convinced political indipendence, anticapitalists and antifascists as much as antiauthoritarians and antimilitaristics, antiracists and antisexists, support the final demonstration in L’Aquila. In the meantime, we intend to realize during the “Welcoming Day” on July the 7th, a block of the traffic and of the mobility that, by combining creative and smartly radical practices, addresses our worthy rage to obstruct the functionality of the celebrations of the Mighty of the Planet and of their bankruptcy. Cooperation between different subjects scares the Crisis rulers, and so we believe in this interaction as fundamental.
We propose the same to all the no-border networks, movements and individuals that want to join us. We are going to receive you at the best of our possibilities, through the resources and the initiatives of the movement, in the frame of the local features and of the methods shared by the unitary mobilization in Rome.
We propose again, to all the networks, groups, movements, activists living in the big cities of the “Club of Mighty” to share a “Map of the crisis”, as much as possible open and global, and to practice it actively, in a reciprocal communication, during the following days.
We propose to make converge actions in the guiding lines of growth and continuity, of a protest movement to develop during the months to come, through the public denunciation and the social siege:
- of the principal responsibles for the crisis and for the subtraction of income, freedom and rights.
- of the structures belonging to the security architecture.
- of the principal responsibles for precarious labour, for firing, for death on the job.
- of the centers responsible for the distruction of resources and life on the planet.
- of the centers responsibles for the aggression against the material conditions of life.
- of the centers responsibles for the expropriation of social wealth and knowledge.
With these suggestions and purposes, we are open to an active political cooperation and to a connection with alternative social practices. From the July days of the meeting and on.
“Akat qhiparux waranq waranqanakax kutinixa (I’ll be back and we’ll be millions) Tupac Katari, 1781
Purple: is, among the colors of the visible spectrum, the one that has the shortest wave length and the highest frequency, it’s the color of the women’s liberation movement, of the sexual self determination, it’s the color of dreams, of metamorphosis, of transition, of magic, of children’s urgency to express themselves.
Purple is the color of slavery too. In England, during the XVI century, it representesed deep mourning; for the candomblé, a brasilian religion, it is linked to the Orixà Iansà, Goddes of Storms; in Lima it is the color of the cult to the Black Christ, “God of Miracles”, venerated by the african slaves, the same on which the indigenous transfered their devotion for Pachacamac, “He, who moves the World”, God of Earthquakes.
During the days of the protests against the G8, Purple will be our color.
Revenge: It’s a strong word that doesn’t leave any space.
It’s dedicated to the ones who get up in the morning, take a bus, their car or a motorcycle, get to their workplace and find their death. It’s dedicated to the statistics that count the deaths on job, statistics longer than the war’s ones. It’s dedicated to the people that leave their countries, their roots, to go and look for a better future, but find borders, walls and racism: in Italy it is not strange to ear about a shame called Cie – centers for the identification and deportation of immigrants – a dull definition to hide what history already knows as lagers. Our words, our hands, our emotions, our reasons trace the revenge. It’s a collective body that moves along the metropolis. We turn upon who dispossess us of our life, the same speed that bring us from a place of exploitation to another, from the uncertainty of the present to the negation of a future.
Victory: the classical image, the two fingers signing a resistance that will win. Because it’s necessary to desire and pursue a real and radical change. Victory we are looking for and power we are struggle against are not birds of a feather.
We want the time they steal from us, the participation they prevent us from, the voice they stifle, the richness they take away. What move us is our necessity of new political, economic and social choices, opposed to a crisis that will reproduce itself endlessly, to recreate the capital and its dominion. The kind of victory we are looking for is that of wresting a meter more, of taking a full breath, of stating that a project of liberation is feasible. It’s the anticapitalist victory we are trying to reproduce and support. Victories can be little but they build a way. We are resolute in pursuing it. This time, and many others again.
It will be difficult to stop us.
V as viola ( purple)
V as vendetta (revenge)
V as vittoria (victory)
V-strategy
Rome, Italy, June 2009