Turin was the scene of a large demonstration of 50,000 people and several other were unable to arrive due to the action of the police and the unfortunate decisions taken by the police headquarters and the institutions of Turin that blocked the city, the stations where the demonstration arrived, blocked the main streets for some buses that arrived at Porta Nuova or that touched some pieces of the procession, with citizens who were left on the ground for hours, even where no procession at all passed. At the same time, the police blocked the buses arriving from other cities for the demonstration, identifying and photographing everyone.
This whole demonstration was hindered with a preventive press campaign, with prohibitions and provisions from the Ministry of the Interior, the Turin police headquarters, up to the miserable rector of the Palazzo Nuovo University who, under pressure from Minister Bernini, closed the university to students, to those who are the actual owners.
So the violence began even before and it was state violence, institutional violence, police violence. The mother of all violence is the eviction of the Askatasuna social centre, because it has meaning taking away not only from the militants and activists of Askatasuna but from the city, from the neighbourhood, a social centre active for over 30 years on all the big issues as well as on the small issues of the neighbourhood.
This social centre has been one of the beating hearts of the protest against the war, of solidarity with the Palestinian people, of the social struggle of the precarious, of the unemployed, but first of all it was the expression of the rebellion of a new generation that in Turin for days and days, for weeks and weeks, took the field against the war industry, the territorial devastation, the speculative work that is called TAV based on the profit of Capital to the detriment of the populations. Against all this a constant violence has been exercised, against all this everything has been done to erase this experience, to erase this history, these lives.
Well, now they talk about violence, but your violence is the true matrix of all disorder, it is the true matrix of a society, of a State, of a city not made to measure for the proletarians, the popular masses, the youth, the migrants, the workers, but made to the measure of speculation, of wealth, made to the measure of the bosses, made to measure then to a generation of centre-right as well as centre-left politicians who have allowed the speculative sack of this city, the deformation of a working-class, young, future-oriented city into a city at the service of crime and big business.
Against all this, has lived the thirty-year experience of Askatasuna and it will certainly not be those four damned and miserable people who are in the government and in the institutions who will have the right to denigrate a social centre that has constituted a wealth of this city and wants to continue to be so, a wealth of the antagonistic, proletarian, popular and youth movement, a wealth of our country, against those who have now appropriated it and think of using it for their own use and measure.
Against all this state violence, of the system, an adequate response had to be found to stop it and, in perspective, overturn and erase it. Everything else is boredom, it is gossip, it is miserable defenses of this State, of this government, of this system, of this press, of these parliamentary parties.
This was the demonstration in Turin.
Two plastic images must be fully vindicated, which are an indication for our whole country: the tide of participants - look at it in the photos from above - a gigantic snake, full in all rows as never before, full of all the reasons for the struggle and combat against this system, this State that leads us to war, fascism, misery, to the oppression of proletarians and peoples, to the devastation of the TAV, TAP, the government of military bases, the government of Niscemi, of other environmental disasters. Against all this, the demonstration wanted to express an opposition. And thousands and thousands of comrades from trade unions, social centres, the student movement, in solidarity with Palestine, associations came to Turin, not as many as they could have been and wanted to be, but we were all in Turin, both those who came and those who "watched the videos".
But on this, however, a discussion must be made: stop, on occasions that are fundamental for the social and political clash, for the future of this country, watching videos, mobile phones, instead of making the enormous efforts that are sometimes required to participate in a distant demonstration - because we were 50,000, but we could have been 500,000, we could have been a million, and this was not possible partly for the objective reasons that we all have but also because many prefer to watch, even if they call themselves antagonists, opponents; they prefer to stay on videos, only to comment like fleas and talking crickets on social media or mass media.
But let's go back to the demonstration.
We have said two plastic images: the tide, the wind represented by this tide that filled the city of Turin, which gave life to this huge snake, and then that of the burning armoured vehicle. Yes, the burning armoured vehicle, because this was a necessary action, because obviously we cannot accept certain situations, we cannot accept the militarization of the city, we cannot accept a flood of policemen blocking the procession that wanted to reach its natural place: we are demonstrating against the eviction of Askatasuna and Askatasuna is the arrival point of a national demonstration, and banning it is a violence that cannot be accepted, it is a violation of a right, that of demonstrating, of protesting, it is a form of dictatorship, of blackmail, against those who participated in the demonstration, in particular the tide of very young people. Askatasuna had to be arrived at and to go there it was necessary to face a deployment of police certainly well determined to beat, to massacre, and if anything even to kill, because this was prepared beforehand, the policemen were certainly not told to stop but to be ready to do anything to defend the simulacrum of state repression represented by the closure of Askatasuna.
The real wound of Turin, gentlemen of the Turin Press, is the closure of Askatasuna, it is the violence exercised against an experience, a people, a city, and on this wound of Turin you have been silent, accomplices and today you have no right to cry out about violence. Your newspaper is a "shit" newspaper on these issues and rightly it has been the sign of a protest even internally, it is not you who can give lessons to those who fight for things much much bigger than you.
The demonstration crossed the whole city in a peaceful form, but when we say in a peaceful form it does not mean "pacified", it means that the slogans, the banners, the thousand combative voices, determined to fight have united. The significant presence of the Palestinian people through its representatives is important, which has demanded loud and clear the release of the Palestinian prisoners, of those that you as State, you Government have arrested on behalf of the Zionist State of Israel, you have arrested Hannoun, you have built a judicial stunt that wants to intimidate the solidarity and unity of the Palestinian people, you have condemned Anan, a political prisoner belonging to the resistance, who in this country has not committed any crime and you keep him in jail on the basis of the papers brought by Israeli criminals, by those who are also defined by the International Criminal Court as criminals: Netanyahu, the Zionist regime, genocidal, massacrer of women and children, starving a people, bearer of a plan of deportation, of erasure of a people that recalls the Holocaust and the worst crimes in the history of humanity... The Palestinian people with their representatives present shouted loudly "freedom for Hannoun, Anan and all... Free Palestine"!
Just as there was a very strong delegation from Kurdistan that defends the experience of Rojava, the struggle of a people and of the women of this people, to build an alternative model in the heart of barbaric regimes, of Assad, of the Islamic State, all at the service of imperialism, all at the service of the fascist Erdogan, all at the service of the hands on the lands and freedoms of the peoples, who want to erase Rojava.
Just as clearly all the people who have fought in Turin as well as at the national level in recent months, in these years, were represented.
This demonstration was crossed in this way by all the social instances of freedom, of liberation, which honoured the slogan "Askatasuna means freedom, repression will not stop us". This was the demonstration, a huge procession forced not to cross the centre, isolated from the other popular neighbourhoods, such as Barriera di Milano, hindered in every way by the prohibitions to get there even with the closure of the streets, ordinary traffic, buses.
This demonstration finally arrived, it arrived where it had to go, to the point where the police headquarters and the requests of the Ministry of the Interior with the complicity of all the institutions had decided that it had to stop. But it could not be stopped, the wind cannot be stopped, the desire for freedom and the resumption of social spaces cannot be stopped! And for this reason it was right and necessary that a large part of the rebel youth, and not only it, present at the demonstration, belonging to all realities, from the social centres, to the student movement, of Turin and the various cities, to the area of comrades and women comrades who rightly proudly declare to be antagonistic and revolutionary, to the opposition of this government, of this state, of this system, has marched to the end to reach Askatasuna. It was necessary both as a form of defense and to make it clear who Askatasuna is, not only a social centre but a territory that has also become a territory to be liberated.
And it was done with all the necessary "weapons" to respond to the police violence that so many times has hit, massacred young and very young people and that has also hit the 31st January with water cannons, a huge mass of tear gas that burns lungs, eyes, with batons, punches, kicks young people, even minors on the ground, wounded (but this has not been seen on television, there are no photos or articles in the mainstream press about this...); to respond to the fascist and police state ignominy, of security decrees that violate freedoms, including constitutional ones.
Of course it was necessary to go "equipped", of course it was necessary to oppose police violence to everything that could stop it, of course it was necessary to make it increasingly clear that that space must be reconquered, that the resistance that opposes the state of repression is a New Resistance that does not intend to stop or even be stopped by the police state and by the security decrees and by the mounting hype of the press, TV, government, institutions.
And therefore everything that has happened is normal, right and necessary. Even the episode that caused a "scandal", that of the "assault on a policeman", of which all the mass media, the politicians both of the majority and of the "opposition" talk and talk too much, was well explained by a journalist from Il manifesto, whose text we published, is not exactly as it was described (all this alarm, even "attempted murder" and then he is discharged from the hospital the next day, with some bruises, grazes..); But how many times have the policemen actually massacred? But for them impunity is demanded, no one pays, on the contrary, he receives a visit from Meloni, the praise of the fascist and police government that makes the idea of fascism and the practice of repression, systemic, global, its ideology and its reason for being in power, for being at the service of big Capital, of its designs, at the service of war, at the service of Trump and all the monsters generated by this imperialist system that is increasingly "from Minneapolis to Turin, from India to Palestine", a system that kills, that massacres, a capitalist/imperialist system that must be overthrown, because it is a brake on the social and political history of liberation and freedom, of equality, not only of our people but of all peoples.
With what courage can a minister, the fat man at the service of military lobbies like Crosetto, speak of "terrorism" when his ministry is within NATO, within the privileged alliance with the American imperialist system and Trump? Terrorism is you, the terrorism of the military state, the terrorism of the war industry, the terrorism of social cuts to favour the war industry, the terrorism of your military missions, the terrorism of wanting to frame young people with a new uniform to become cannon fodder for your wars. The real terrorists are you, the terrorists of the word, you can say everything and the opposite of everything, insult the people, the students, the people who struggle and think you can get away with it? Do you think that the day of judgment will not come for you too?
You think repression can stop the rebellion but instead it feeds it! And Turin is a plastic demonstration that you can't stop it. The masses were in the square, they were in the march, there were many of us, we were many more than all of you and we represented much more than that misery of barbarians that you represent!
And that is why it was right and necessary that this demonstration marked a point, even of no return, for the movement that has the right to rebel, has the right to rise up against the state of war, repression, the destruction of jobs, environmental devastation; a movement that thinks that Askatasuna must become - and has become - a flag of all of us. This demonstration has honoured the name Askatasuna which means freedom, freedom to strike, freedom to demonstrate, freedom to study, freedom to have a home, freedom to have a salary, a dignified right, freedom not to lose one's job, freedom not to die in the workplace, freedom to have a territory freed from the so called major works, from NATO bases. These freedoms are won with struggle, we are all children of two generations, the generation of the Resistance, the generation of the 70s, proudly heirs of the 70s that take up the flags of rebellion.
This is the message that comes from the demonstration and applies not only to the young people who animated it and fought for it, but it applies to all generations.
And it is clear that it is a litmus test on which side to stand, it is not enough to clear one's conscience by shouting: "we know which side to be on, Palestine free from the river to the sea", a glorious slogan that we continue to shout and today even more forcefully. Today we must be on the side of Askatasuna, we must be on the side of the Turin demonstration, defend it without good and bad, knowing that the so-called bad guys are actually the children of their social class, the imperialist bourgeoisie, the lords of wealth, the warlords, the lords of oil, energy, the lords of speculation, the lords of the hands on the city, the lords of corruption, the lords of malfeasance.
On the side of those who rebel against all this, with all the necessary weapons, because state violence cannot be answered with flowers, flowers if they do not have the fighting force to break and question state violence, they cannot liberate the peoples, the proletarians, both on the great questions of war, and on the small issues of the defense of daily rights in the face of a State and a government that arrogantly claims to stifle all forms of dissent, claims to violate the Constitution.
Mattarella, but please, fuck you! How is it possible to agree to sign all the security decrees and claim to have a clean soul to talk about democracy and the Constitution? But please!
Returning to the demonstration, it is you who are calling us to raise the bar of the struggle; all those who have a revolutionary spirit and a will to Revolution who know well that the Revolution is not a gala dinner, and the class struggle, the social struggle has never been this when it is true, but also those who are not yet clearly on this position.
It should be known that, unfortunately, the state violence, the open dictatorship towards which this government and this state are marching, according to the Trump model, according to Minneapolis, will have to be opposed by a New Resistance, which is made up of demonstrations that know how to defend their reasons from police attacks, and therefore use all the creative tools we can afford. And these creative tools were partly present in the demonstration in Turin, and this was a good thing, otherwise we would have been filled with tear gas anyway, we would have been chased street by street and hit, injured in every way, arrested. This barrier has put a limit on police violence and therefore this barrier was necessary, it is necessary, and it must be valued and learned.
We must learn from the Turin demonstration, all of us, otherwise we will be the beautiful souls of lament, the beautiful souls of victimhood, the beautiful souls who do not know the enemy, do not know that this enemy is an enemy that will not stop until it can make the open dictatorship, the police state, until it can make its wars, until it can dismiss the worker without the possibility of making an appeal, until migrants are thrown into the sea, hunted or locked up in CPR prisons, etc.; until being on the side of Palestine becomes a real crime and not instead being on the side of a great humanity that this world requires as a tide to get out of the barbarism towards which they are making us fall.
Yes to "fires" when they are necessary, because without them we are nothing, without having the strength to defend our demonstrations they will prohibit them more and more and force us to worse scenarios.
Finally, something else must be said about the infamous indictment of the Turin prosecutor who is now the star of the government and the bourgeois press, who has claimed to read the matter according to the worst canons of the fascist code and the fascist mentality that is certainly not new in the history of this country.
She was rightly called "servant of the TAV mafia". Isn't that the case? Has the Public Prosecutor's Office so far stopped the TAV work or instead has it prosecuted with the spirit of a holy inquisition all those who have fought against the TAV in all forms, also paying high costs both in terms of repression, and on some occasions of human life, but above all of loss, of an important piece of their territory and their lives? Well, Mrs. Lucia Musti, dressed in an ermine toga, allows herself to make this infamous trial of intentions as the worst school of fascism and military dictatorships when she says that "demonstrating for rights hides the desire to use the square for a struggle outside the democratic context".
The "democratic context" closed Askatasuna, the "democratic context" leads us to war and to generalized repression, the "democratic context" condemns the workers who blocked the streets of Bologna for the contract; In this "democratic context" you are making the worst fascist laws and pretend that the problem is those who fight outside this "democratic context"! If the "democratic context" is a fig leaf of an acting fascism, of repression, of a police state, we are all outside this "democratic context", we must all be, precisely in the name of the defense of freedoms, rights, which has always characterized a significant part of intellectuals, of the small and sometimes even middle bourgeoisie, who have always participated in the historical moments of this country, in the Resistance, in the 70s, and who continue today to side with the peoples and with the social struggles.
Who are you attorney Musti to make speeches of this kind? To attack "the upper class responsible - in her opinion - for a benevolent tolerance, for a complacent reading of conduct, which are nothing more than serious crimes on the part of certain subjects belonging, this time yes, to the upper class". Like this you have already convicted, you speak of "serious crimes"! You are not one who has to supervise the rules of a trial, you are the Holy Inquisition, you are the special laws, you are fascist, fascist and anti-democratic. You even hit members of your class because you want a regime, you want a dictatorship. Well, if it were up to you, Mrs. Lucia Musti, Attorney General of Turin, this referendum to get the hands on the judiciary would have no reason to do it because you are already at the service of this government, of this system, with the anti-constitutional laws you give birth every day, you are not justice over the parties, you are justice denied, justice murderous, justice that wants to erase democracy and true justice in this country.
Everyone huddles around you, the mainstream press praises you, makes you a new champion of their dirty interests, of a repressive state, a police state that our partisans thought they had erased with the resistance and for which the movement of the seventies made life difficult for a few months.
It is clear that at this point the demonstration must be defended, even from the voices that within those who participated in it and now hide their hands. Of course, they too are the target of attacks from the government, the press and so on, but certain statements suck! You cannot shout that this state is so-and-so, cry out about attacks on democracy and the Constitution and then be ready to jump on the bandwagon of the bourgeois state, its press, its government and thus open the way to new repressive laws that you should fight.
But just as you have not succeeded, in part you have not, really wanted to fight the security decrees, now distancing yourself from the demonstration does not save your soul, it is part of the culture broth of the new laws that this government announces and which we will talk about tomorrow and throughout the week, because the Turin issue is important, it is a fundamental discriminating factor: Which side are we on and how do we want to fight this state, this government, this system? What is not only your political position, your ideology, your culture, the real commitment you want to put into stopping what is happening in this country and to really fight it and not on the pages of newspapers, on the web or in the halls of parliament where, to tell the truth, if we hoped in you to stop all this we would have died from the start.
We claim Turin, all of it: from the tide of the Procession to the burnt armoured vehicle, we are on this side and on this side we need to gather the best forces of this country so that they are today a dam and then an effective resistance that has the ability to question and overturn the existing order of things in the interest of the proletarians and peoples both in our country and in the world.
