Monday, March 5, 2012

The week that shook Italy. The struggle against the high-speed train: a "people's war" with no arms


The week that shook Italy
The struggle against the high-speed train

The construction of a high-speed train railroad between Italy and France (TAV) in Valle di Susa has been contested now for 20 years, in which a movement of people’s resistance strongly based on the Valley, but widely supported on a national scale, had stopped the project and stalemated the government efforts.
In the last 18 months the fight dramatically grew in strength, since the government declared the “area of national strategic interest” the site of the planned tunnel, to militarize the area and unchain a stronger repression on the resisters.
But neither the military occupation or the arrests of dozens of activists could extinguish the struggle of the people and the last week marked a leap both in the State violence and in the resistance that affected and shook the whole country.
On 25th February a massive demonstration of 75,000 people marched through the Val di Susa to shout loudly their NO to the TAV. We was there.
In defiance of that, two days later the government decided to anticipate the illegal expropriation of the lands to fence and implement the site.
The farmers resisted. One of them, Luca Abbà, a well-known activist always at the forefront of the protest, managed to avoid police controls and climbed up on an electrical pole. One policeman chased him and therefore forced the man to climb higher and higher, where he a high voltage cable and fell own, seriously risking his life. Luca is loved and respected throughout the valley. The protest spreads and from Susa valley stretches across Italy.

On the same afternoon, rail stations and routes in the area of Torino were blocked. On the motorway NOTAV activists built barricades and set up some little camps. The blockade lasted for almost 48 hours on the most important axis between France and Italy. Other protests and blockades took place in Trento, Pisa, Torino, Napoli, Genova, Palermo, Salerno, Brescia, Milano, Roma and elsewere.

In the Val di Susa police savagely evacuated the motorway by attacking demonstrators who were sitting on the road. There are reports of lots of injured and hospitalized people as well as some arrests. Other attacks on NOTAV demonstrators are reported in Bologna, Milano, Rome and elsewhere. Particularly, in the Val di Susa the police looked for them in bars and cafeterias, smashing some windows.
The State, the Government, the parliamentary parties, part the press and some judge launched an hateful campaign to justify the occupation of the valley, the police violence, arrests and criminalize the No TAV movement.

But none of these manoeuvres could stop the protest or divide the unity of the struggling front. The struggle continues up today with marches, blockades, occupations and other forms in the Val di Susa and across the country.
We are part and support this struggle, that is the strongest one in our country against the environmental devastation at the service of speculation and profit.

We are engaged in the battle to generalize on a national scale the positive features of the No Tav movement, that has been able to unite in a popular and protracted struggle all the forces and the different social and political trends that fight the TAV, the capitalist system that impose it, and the political system that sees parliamentary parties and trade unions confederations, CISL, UIL, CGIL, all joined in defense of this big speculative project.
While they unload the weigh of the economic crisis on the proletarians and the masses with taxes, cost of living increases, attack on pensions, cuts of workers' rights, they spend dozens of billions for a work unnecessary and harmful, as well as are harmful and unnecessary expenses for the F35 aircrafts. It is unacceptable!
The economic and political forces that support the TAV are today represented by the Monti’s government. They try to impose that project with the same line they follow when they try to impose the so-called “reform of the job-market”, i.e. the freedom for the bosses to layoff the workers. We face a government of “technical dictatorship”, modern fascist, the denies the democracy and suppresses the masses that do not accept their decisions.
That is the true violence, the true State terror that today the people’s movements are challenging. The NO TAV rebellion is not just a right and necessary struggle against the high-speed train railroad but a people’s uprising, like that we need in Italy to wipe out this government and all the governments of the bosses, of speculation and environmental devastation.

The repression does not stop but feeds the rebellion!
To the “global war” that the State, government, bosses are waging against the masses in Val di Susa the masses are responding with an equally global and prolonged “people’s war”. Let’s struggle toghether for a political and social revolution that puts on the command in the society the interest and will of the masses.

Val Susa is not afraid!
Now and ever Resistance!
We are all NOTAV !

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