Occupy Pisa: Via La Pergola evicted, the occupations continue!

For background info and context on the Occupy Pisa past successes read this old article here.

February 15th: only two days after the launch of the new campaign to promote the occupations in Via la Pergola, local police forces responded with a sudden eviction of the building that started at 7am. Three students who were inside the building preparing to move into their new rooms (part of the building was destined to be a student residence), were given on-the-spot cautions.

A protest spontaneously arose in the area and soon became a demonstration through the city centre. Despite a series of police charges, the protesters managed to storm inside the Council building and hang a banner in support of the occupation: “Via la Pergola won’t pay no debt to the financial Mafia“. Later on, they went on to occupy the Unicredit bank (one of the banks involved in the speculations around Via la Pergola’s occupied building), and then kept marching through the city and flash mobbing several other banks.

In the meantime, a camp was being swiftly put up in the nearby Piazza Dante, while emergency meetings were being called. The camp is receiving an incredible amount of solidarity and interest by local residents, many of whom have attended the meetings and got involved in the project. Despite the eviction, it was decided to go ahead with all the initiatives and projects that had been planned for that day: the People’s University inauguration was moved to the Humanities Faculty of Pisa University, and saw the participation of university teachers, students, activists and local residents.

At a public assembly held straight afterwards, people discussed different options to continue the struggle from the new base in Piazza Dante; other scheduled activities, such as the self-managed canteen, were moved to different places. A few days later, the Debt Advice team, that had been previously been based in the evicted building, decided to become mobile and started a tour around Pisa, stopping at symbolic places such as the local Employment Centre and the University canteen, to protest against the new government’s austerity measures.

It would seem that the attempt to crush the Occupy Pisa experience has only made it stronger: phase 2 of the project is now on, in the streets!

Many thanks to Pisa and national InfoAut crew for info and materials, sources here.

Translated by Italy Calling

Ongoing solidarity with the NO TAV arrestees

Accomplices of any Resistance. Participants in any Conflict. (Solidarity materials from Tunisia)

Over the last few weeks solidarity actions and initiatives with the NO TAV arrestees have kept multiplying: dozens of pickets and demonstrations in various parts of Italy, messages of support from all over Italy and other countries (such as the Basque Country, where people have been fighting the same battle for years, and Tunisia), fundraising and benefit gigs. A few days after the arrests a big benefit gig was held outside Turin’s main prison where most of the local NO TAV activists were being held.

Shortly after the publication of a letter written by the NO TAV activists in Turin’s prison  Le Vallette, denouncing the poor conditions in the building, the group Anonymous hacked the prison’s website, once again stating their solidarity with the NO TAV struggle – as they had already done in December, when they hacked into the YES TAV and their political supporters’ sites. The operation was brought about just a few hours after some of the activists had been transferred from Le Vallette prison precisely for their “attempts to stir up things and involve the other inmates in their protests”, according to the authorities.

In the meantime, some good news for some of them: Gabriela, Jacopo, Samu, Tobia, Lorenzo and Giuseppe have all been released and are now under house arrest, if unfortunately still restricted by a long series of banning orders and bail conditions. Check out at the end of this article an updated list of activists who are still in jail. The InfoAut crew have translated into English a letter written by Giorgio (one of the people originally involved in the protests at Le Vallette prison and then transferred): read it here.

After a big solidarity fair on Saturday 18th February in Bussoleno, the movement is planning a national demonstration on Sunday 25th.

The activists still in prison are:

Alessio Del Sordo – C.C. via Pianezza 300 – 10151 Torino

Matteo Grieco – C.R. San Michele – Strada Statale 31 – 15100 Alessandria

Maurizio Ferrari – Carcere San Vittore – Piazza Filangeri 2 – 20123 Milano

Marcelo Damian Jara Marin – Carcere San Vittore – Piazza Filangeri 2 – 20123 Milano

Gabriele Filippi – Carcere di Marassi – Piazzale Marassi 2 – 16139 Genova

Giorgio Rossetto – C.R. – loc. Cascina Felicina via Regioni Bronda 19/b – 12037 Saluzzo (CN)

Luca Cientanni – C.C. corso Vercelli 165 – 10015 Ivrea (TO)

Juan Antonio Sorroche Fernandez – C.C. – Via Beccaria, 13 – Loc. Spini di Gardolo – 38014 Gardolo (TN)

Antonio Ginetti – Casa Circondariale – Via dei Macelli 13 – 51100 Pistoia

Sources: InfoAut and NO TAV Info.

Translated by Italy Calling

The Occupy Movement in Bologna challenges president Giorgio Napolitano (by InfoAut)

On 30 January 2012 the Occupy Movement in Bologna – alongside with the universitary and secondary-school CUA and CAS students’ collectives and the Laboratorio Occupato Crash autonomous social centre – promoted a day of action against the government’s austerity measures and the awarding, by the local University, of an honorary degree in International Relations to Giorgio Napolitano – Italy’s President.

Why we’re not afraid of the pitchforks

January has been an emotionally intense month for me, and, as a consequence, I haven’t been on my blog a lot, as you might have noticed. Therefore, I haven’t been able to follow “the pitchfork movement” of Sicily, which seems to have been ignored by most mainstream media. Now that I’ve come back to Earth, I thought I’d translate an interesting piece of analysis that I’ve read on the ever excellent site InfoAut. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or you need to refresh your memory a bit, have a look at these articles on Libcom and Struggles in Italy. And here is what the Palermo’s InfoAut crew had to say about it:

You can’t arrest the whole Valley – support the NO TAV arrestees

You can't arrest the whole Valley! Freedom for all NO TAV activists!

If you’ve read my previous article, you’ll know more than twenty NO TAV activists were arrested a few days ago all over Italy; if you haven’t, read it before you carry on here! To keep up-to-date with the NO TAV defendants’ solidarity campaign, you can either follow the Facebook page or the NO TAV’s main website if you understand Italian. Or keep reading my blog otherwise

Also, if one of your New Year resolutions was to be more active, then grab a pen and paper and write to the NO TAV activists in prison (if you’ve never done it before and don’t know how to start, have a read here beforehand). Have a look at the end of this article for some general greeting and phrases in Italian. Everything is better with friends, so why not start a NO TAV letter writing night? Email me if you want me to publicise it on my blog.