On 24th February the Digos of Genoa raided 5 members of the Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali (CALP, Autonomous Collective of Dock Workers) and of Genova Antifascista [Antifascist Genoa]. The investigative hypothesis of the police is criminal association (art. 416) aimed at opposing the fascist presence in the city and arms trafficking in the port of Genoa, with particular reference to the struggle against the transit of ships owned by Saudi company Bahri, with their cargos of weapons destined for wars.
We express our solidarity with the comrades under investigation not only because we think the struggle against fascists and against all wars is right and legitimate but also because we were together in these struggles – on many occasions. The Police are trying to present these struggles as the work of a restricted group of people who “exploit” others, and this attempt must not pass.
Besides necessary solidarity, perhaps it is worth reflecting on the significance of this operation. Police and Prosecutors are only doing their usual job but we cannot fail to point out that an investigation with associative hypotheses based on charges mostly commutable into fines such as “throwing objects” and “ignition of explosive material”, turns out to be a little forced. Perhaps they want to get rid of a group of combative workers who in recent years have given not a little trouble to the bosses of the port and in a certain measure to the unions? Perhaps behind the Digos there are the bosses’ hands in a port that is more and more a land of conquest for the multinationals? Perhaps there is also the hand of the Delta maritime agency (Gastaldi Group), an emissary of Bahri, which is complaining – with letters and reports – about not being able to get on peacefully with their trafficking because of the CALP? For the bosses it is far better that the class relation remains tightly constrained within precise limits and within collaborationist unionism: hypothesis of autonomous initiative must be circumscribed, and if necessary repressed.
The police accuse those under investigation of modifying firework devices in order to make them «lethal», and then – they say – to hurl them at the Bahri ships entering the port. How strange! We thought – if words have still any meaning – that «lethal» were the bombs, tanks, Apaches, which for years Bahri have been supplying to the Saudi monarchy (for the war in Yemen), to the Turkish authoritarian regime (for the war in Syria), to the Indian democracy (for the war in Kashmir).
But this operation is also giving another message. If the struggle goes beyond the boundaries of what is allowed, if you try to give real trouble to the fascists (it seems to us that after the clashes of piazza Corvetto in May 2019 they [fascists] have not been seen around much), or to military logistics and war (we recall that Bahri ships continue to transit in the port with their load of death but they haven’t docked at the Genoa Metal Terminal since the first block and strike in May 2019), in other words, if you try to be effective, you enter the territory of illegality, you become delinquents. Nothing new but it is good to point it out. Not only is the Law a weapon of the class enemy and never was and never will be an instrument of proletarians against their exploiters, but it is precisely on this level that solidarity should be intended, solidarity which is real only if it sets the goal of continuing the struggle, identifying the ways through which we can really and continuously upset the enemy. To keep going, therefore, without leaving anybody behind.
Wars are always motivated by the need to control territories in order to grab the resources needed by western democratic societies and the fact can’t be concealed that – alongside the usual oil, gas, and low-cost labour – the current digitalization of society and the automation of work, besides worsening our material conditions and the very possibility of remaining human, will produce new wars, refugees and ecological devastations in order to plunder those rare metals, truly indispensable for the technological transition.
When an ex-manager of Leonardo such as Cingolani becomes the minister of ecological Transition, and ex-minister of the Interior such as Minniti director of MedOr (a Leonardo new centre of studies on the Middle East), an army general such as Figliuolo becomes Extraordinary Commissioner to the Covid emergency and the ex-police chief Gabrielli is granted mandate to the secret services, the deep intertwining between the police-military apparatus and the sector of the war industry should jump out at you, as well as the perspective of state management of possible social tensions in the era of Covid: war on the population as a possible internal enemy, starting from those who don’t bow their heads. It should jump out at you that wars – and therefore opposition to them – certainly concern Saudi reactionary monarchs and Erdogan’s regime but they are first and foremost a business for the bosses at home, a strategic interest of democracies, and a widening horizon of the world we inhabit and of the social relations being imposed on us.
To who wars and injustices are unbearable, to who doesn’t give up but wants to continue to act, the usual instruments remain: analysis of materiality and ethical tension, critical gaze and direct action: hands, minds and hearts.
Outside all Codes
Solidarity is in the struggle
Antimilitarists from Genoa, March 2021
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Source: RoundRobin Translated by act for freedom now!
