A text handed out on the day of protest against the green pass, price increases, repression and the exploitation of labour in Saronno on 13th November
THE WRONG WAY UP
For several weeks the national media have been reporting statements from the Milan police station talking of infiltrators, extremists, etc. In this witch-hunt climate the homes of three comrades were raided a few weeks ago in Saronno, in search of mobile phones and computers, with the purpose of finding traces of Telegram groups, messages, leaflets, flyers.
In fact, for several months spontaneous mass demonstrations have been forming and spreading in almost all the city squares in Italy. The fuse was the compulsory green pass to access workplaces and social life in general.
A progressive process of transformation has been in act in our society for several years: digitalization is not the aim of this transformation, but its means. Yet again, the horizon of these events is the development of capital to the detriment of the organic nature of life. As a corollary, behind this frantic development come the transformations of this society down to its innermost ramifications: our relations and the way we live them. Control is also part of this discourse; in fact it is useful to capitalist development insofar as it is preparatory to profit and the subjugation of the great mass of living beings that inhabit our planet.
So the green pass is only the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg of misery and exploitation into which we have been channeled for decades, while those who have everything to gain from this mechanism have hardly been touched. It is no coincidence that the economic issue has been the raw nerve of the management of the protests in the squares in recent months: the blockade of the port of Trieste would have brought millions of euros’ damage, and in fact the State intervened with water cannons and iron fist tactics. In recent weeks the police have tried to stem marches in Milan mainly with the excuse of loss of takings for shopkeepers, an excuse obviously loudly reiterated by the mayor Sala.
Not only: the unblocking of redundancies clearly shows on whom the lost profits of the last two years will fall. The lack of a conflictual perspective turned the injustice that occurred in the local Gianetti wheels factory in Ceriano Laghetto into a tragedy: hundreds of people, turned into a workforce several decades ago, were literally thrown out onto the street because they had outlived their purpose. Meantime the government has approved an across-the-board – for the exploited – increase in costs; at the same time health care continues to be cut and privatized while funds are directed exclusively towards vaccines (remember the fine words of March and April 2020?)
In the face of the rapid evolving of these events, the exacerbation of positions and also of human relations, we believe it is indispensable to speak out and intervene now to affirm the uniqueness of our lives against those who would like to make us mere numbers for their statistics, fit for work, obedience, consumption; and as numbers to be thrown in the bin when we are finished being exploited – see Gianetti wheels, see the pension negotiations – or as numbers to be excluded if one does not give in to the blackmail in the context of an increasingly exclusionary and class-divided social life – see for example the recent fines to Milan demonstrators following an unauthorized demo, guilty, they claim, of preventing citizens from entering the city centre, as if city streets and especially the centres had become exclusive preserve of commerce and consumerism.
So let’s re-assert the necessity of the struggle and conflict, some of the few weapons the exploited have to overturn the situation; spreading – as is already happening – mutual aid as a practice of solidarity, supporting each other in our ethical choices and in the case of need.
We have little to defend of the world we are leaving behind; a possible world to be gained is ahead of us.
