When the “scum of Porta Pia” rises up

by COMMONWARE

What is ment by ‘rise’? No one thought October 19 would be able to reply on, submitting the question would have been ambitious anyway. From this point of view, the demonstration in Rome has achieved a pivotal result, partbut far notsimple nor obvious.

Up against the undeniable breakup processes acting out of the crisis, the matter has been finding ways to reverse the course. The effort consisted in starting from the power of extending motion some struggles have: those on public housing rights, the ones made up by logistics hard caps, moreover the movements that so far have been defined territorial –- No Tav, No Muos – nowadays feeling this tag as a tie that bends.

Recomposition is a word to assess, to handle with care, going towards bare conflicts and networks – worse acronyms – is the trap right behind the corner. The fear October 19, engraved by unease among existing movements – or those not yet defined –, would not be able to move beyond that generous and intense militant effort making the struggle possible was actually laying down that item. Things turned out differently, a definite approach has been taken: without taking dares and bets there cannot be any leap forward.

First unpredictable matter was the hugeness: no need to point out if 70,000 or 100,000 people, once defined such a bulk we can assume this as twice or more of what was estimated as a “good attendance”. Not to mention this involvement was actually self-organized, willing fully built up without institutional support, nevertheless without a deal with Trenitalia that truly narrowed the right to demonstrate, even more while the crisis ever sets broader sections of the population aside the opportunity to spend 50 or 100 euro to move. Moreover, while media mainstream have leaded a campaign build over a light-out and criminalizing strategy, those numbers mean nothing but that fear has been overcome. That is, perhaps, fear is so inborn the uprising violence of downturn it has lost any chance to play as veiled threat. Anyway, the benefits of normalcy have failed.

Then, premises are needed about parade makeup. This is the field you can measure the difference on attempt to generate new left institutional structures, more than just remarking presence appraisal nor its self-organized nature. People variously recognizing themselves in October 19 field – migrants, first and second-generation of precarious people, downgraded middle class – do not just talk about downturn: they do live, suffer and are fed up with paying for it, with or without Berlusconi and government turnover. They are detached from Constitution for the social deal that guaranteed it never had any benefit so far, up to this point nor any memory or telling. Those who insist on talking about models suited over “two societies” logic did not understand anything about the roots of this process, never mind now. The one we’re in is the cognitive and fickle labour society. Therefore, the multiform radicality someway it expresses should be read in materialist rather than ideological terms: that’s related with social conditions and subjective behaviours – thought far from politic since this is disingenuously mistaken with delegation –, even more than with approaches headed up by constituents. Moreover, the symbolic level defining many of the praxis in movements from the end of the Nineties has run out, just because the precariousness of life has nothing symbolic saved up.

Thirdly, these subjects embody issues – although rough and still so partial – can already defined as a “program” . Housing struggles, by squatting actions diffused rather unheard of, for instance even in Rome, where lays undoubtedly a deep-rooted usage, introduce new elements and features, starting with the leadership of migrants. Income issues, even more embodied in nuts and bolts, had become genetics not only in movements but also in the actual pattern of crisis – while only unions and left sided parties still do not realize or almost deny. The “right to the city” sets up in struggles for urban space critical use and seizure (even “territorial movements” draw fully on this side). The leading role of migrants, then, is no longer narrowed on matters of citizenship and rights: they’re roundly in the struggles on/about workplace, housing politics and income borrowing. Spotting on “colors” of the event is part of a multicultural misleading rhetoric, while insisting on a peculiar detachment or unmerged heterogeneity regarding class composition as a whole is likely to overlook the objective and subjective elements of commonality.

Last but not least, October 19 was not just an Italian appointment: a huge parade in Lisbon has blocked the port, a crowded gathering in Madrid filled Puerta del Sol, and the initiatives about houses in other European cities. The fight against austerity and politics action cannot be but ventures internationally embodied, that’s assumed. acquired. How to apply is the problem to solve. Moving from the struggles in the Mediterranean area seems to be something more than just a suggestion but an assumption to outdraw the debate on European scenarios from ideology or redundancy of obsolete theories. October 19 definitely confirms that Christian Marazzi is right to argue that in a framework historically distinguished we are compelled to focus and arouse commons, starting from living conditions.

It that October 19 enough? Of course not. On a side, because we can not settle for a “fall” display, set in that pattern of “warm” and “cold” seasons we carry on starting from the storied cycles of workers’ struggles. The attitude of social actors able to define their own temporality has to go through and beyond the 19th, if intended to be not just an event than a process. On the other hand, while attempting the event, several acts widespread and not just militants took place, foreshadowing what was then expressed on the streets of Rome. Small but relevant signs, to read and cultivate.

Some time ago, raising the question of the lack of an equivalent to “Occupy” in Italy (with the exception of the Val di Susa), we talked about “caps” preventing the emergency. Assessing these caps are now finally skipped would be hasty. There seems, however, some of them – those of governance within and outside the movements, for instance – are failing. Perhaps that’s what those reactionary newspapers have noticed when - in the aftermath of 19th - nastly and fearfully talked about the “scum of Porta Pia”. As Sarkozy in 2005 when defined “racaille” the banlieusarde , what they try to exorcise is but a truth: the “scum of Porta Pia” is nowadays the general condition of diverse makeup of living labor, precarious and impoverished, who besieged Rome ministries. It is precisely this, well over 19th, we assess as able to or maybe has just begun to rise.

 

We want the immediate freedom for the comrades arrested the #19o: you can not stop the wind...

 

* Translation by Manuela Costa.