Independence days: L&S speaks in Rome

Last week I was honoured to be invited to speak in Rome at the Independence Days conference held at a number of venues in the Italian Capital. I was invited not on the basis that I am an expert but that they wanted to hear from activists working on the similar issues and in the same ways, to share tactics. Just as important was the need to tell each other face to face what the situation in our home countries was like – and I was literally speechless at what I discovered, both in terms of their movement and in terms of what they face.

My hosts were Coordinamente de Lotta de Casa – (roughly ‘coordination of the housing struggle’). They have been seizing empty or unused buildings for almost a decade to house working class and poor families, as well as open ‘social centres’ – buildings used as meeting spaces and movement venues rather than simply housing. Currently they have 10 housing projects, some 7 years old, and these things are HUGE – some are tower blocks, and some are several neighbouring buildings – they can house up to 150 families. As squatting is completely illegal in Italy and all occupied buildings must be defended by sheer numbers and organisation, the requirements of living in one are simple – attend the building’s meetings, and attend all demonstrations to defend it and other buildings in the network. If you fail to meet this, are violent, anti social, or overtly dealing drugs – you are evicted. I asked my guide what happened if evictees wanted revenge:
“They can come back, yes, and one of them had a gun once – but I made it clear that there are many of us in the community and he is only one. If you think about it, attacking us is a very bad idea.”

Coordinamente organise by weekly mass meetings, and their buildings do the same. Different working groups or sub groups take on different issues. They are far from alone in the housing campaign, another group called ACTION also run about 10 occupied buildings, as well as there just being many more squats in Rome run by radicals and progressives. Coordinamente are brought together because they are not looking for legalisation or representation from the state, which other groups are; the Disobedienti for instance, a well known group aligned to the writer Negri, have candidates in the council and use a more hierarchical structure which my hosts did not follow.

As we understand it, there is no social welfare in Italy. There is no dole, and there is no social housing. If you leave a job with a ‘fixed contract’ then the state give you a single lump sum. If you are employed without a fixed contract, which is more common, then you are not recognised to be unemployed when you leave or are fired – the state calls you ‘unoccupied’ and gives you nothing. There is some social housing but it is awarded on the basis of employment (i.e. bus driver) so if you are unemployed you still get nothing. This is why their struggle is so much more direct, whilst in the UK we fight to maintain and the gains we won in 1945. I talked at length about our struggles in London but sometimes they looked incredulous at what we already have. We may now only have 3 years paid leave for a single mother to be a carer for their child as opposed to six, but in Italy they have none.

My home for four days, along with a comrade from Whitechapel Anarchists, was a double room in “acrobax” - a squatted Greyhound track! Taken in 2002, it has since become a sports centre, with basketball courts and a grass pitch. Antifascism is a priority, so they launched the All Reds rugby team to counteract the following Rugby has within the Italian Far Right; on this cultural battlefield they also have a recording studio for any artist who is antifascist and willing to give their music freely under Creative Commons licensing. Unfortunately, the main battlefield is all too real – the ‘Renoize’ music studio is dedicated to an activist called Renato, murdered for attending a Reggae concert. When they held a memorial concert for Renato last year, the fascists stabbed another person on their way home – luckily they lived. When we visited the movement’s radio station, Radio Onda Rossa (Red Radio), we were asked not to photograph the doors or windows for security. The week before we arrived, fascists attempted to bomb a social centre but were spotted and chased off; each centre must be prepared to defend itself, as pickaxe handles and motorcycle helmets piled in corners attested. The Italian Far Right is doing the best it ever has since the 1940’s, with 3 major parties, with one now allied to the openly corrupt and racist premier Berlusconi. I’m not being shrill here, he really is both; if he wasn’t in power, he’d be in jail, but you cannot jail serving politicians or some bizarre legal oddity. For every other political poster you see 5 fascist ones, and tourist gift shops openly sell statues of Mussolini and fascist memorabilia. Unlike Germany which bans its Nazis, only the name ‘the Fascist party’ is illegal – the actual Fascist party is alive and well today. Mussolini’s granddaughter is an active and popular politician.

In my final session on the coming G20, I spoke about L&S and the IWW’s support for the Militant Workers Block on the March 28th demonstration in London, and the hope that our movement in the UK would similarly become focussed on particular struggles and winning tactics rather than identity or ideology of groups themselves: let the tactics inform theory. They told me about their concept of the ‘basic income’ – their demand that all people be awarded a basic income whether working or not. As I say, I was not there out of expertise, and I still have some trouble with this concept – is it an actual demand they see being won? Or a kind of rational but impossible campaign aimed at mobilising people? Either way, I liked its cold, hard reality! It is something people will be able to recognise, and I was happy to see other radicals dealing with solid concepts and not being afraid to demand reforms after being warned what a bunch of theoreticians and bookworms the Italians were. Out of the conference, to continue to track the economic crisis and the resistance to it, an international website will be set up and L&S happily will contribute to it. It has been an absolute pleasure to be contacted out of the blue and introduced to such an ambitious and organised movement, and I will take away a great deal from the 4 days.