For over a year, the men and women of the city of Vicenza have been fighting against the construction of a new, immense american military structure, that we don’t want built neither here nor anywhere else. A struggle that has gathered people of different political orientations, cultures, languages, and histories together. This battle has its roots in the defense of the earth and in the determined “No” to the war, the source of suffering and tragedy, and in the demand for peace. “Official” politics have shown, in this whole story, the worst of itself, attempting to impose a choice such as this on a community that is strongly opposed. With no difference, the Italian governments of center-left and center-right have decided to pass over the heads of the citizens.

The defense of our Common Goods, the “No” to the war, new forms of democracy and participation in the decision making process, full autonomy in respect to “politics”: for us of the Permanent Watch Against Dal Molin, these have been the cardinal points to maintain our course throughout this affair. Together with many other men and women of Italy, we have given live to potent demonstrations, in which hundreds of thousands of people participated. We started from our neighborhoods, in silence, with few forces, and we have managed to bring this contradiction out on a national level.

We have just concluded a festival, in which at least 30,000 people participated, to relaunch out struggle against this project of war. We are convinced that we have to go beyond, that these tight confines are to be exceeded. We have met, along our path, realities in all of Europe very similar to ours. We have intersected forms of resistance and defense of our Common Goods, of our territories, and of our natural resources just like committees, associations and movements that fight just like us to impede the installation of new military structures functional to the permanent war and against a crazy process of re-armament. With all of these experiences we have shared the absolute lack of democracy in the decision making process.

Strikingly similar, we have heard the stories of who, from Venice with the Mose to the Val di Susa with the High Speed Train, from Naples with the rubbish in Cameri, with the construction of the F-35s, from the Czech Republic to Germany, from Holland to Heathrow, from Warsaw to London... All have come against a power that distances itself evermore from the needs and the wills of its citizens, imposing not shared choices from above.

Now we want to exceed new borders. We are convinced that today it is possible to construct a common space of movements that, in their differences and particularities, can take new instances of democracy ahead. We don’t want to propose forms of synthesis or simplification, we don’t want to construct a European movement that annuls the specificity of each one. Au contraire, we want to think on the construction of a network able to accentuate the richness of these movements. As far as we are concerned, we have always preferred to work to widen participation, to construct spaces of inclusion.

We are convinced that today Europe can be, at the same time, a space crossable by these instances and a new dimension workable by movements, in their autonomy, to produce effective results, to concretely measure the strength of the struggles. We have programmed, as the Permanent Watch Against Dal Molin, a European initiative on the days of the 14th, 15th, and 16th, of December, in Vicenza, with a grand demonstration of European citizens against the Dal Molin project. We want, in those days, to have these complexities live together, to put them in relation, with moments of discussion and initiatives on the terrain of peace and on the No to war, on the defense of the territory and on the Common Goods, to rethink together the forms of participation in the crisis of representative democracy, more and more self-referential and far from the needs and the instances of its citizens. The proposal that we make is to construct a first moment of european discussion together, around the end of October, to prepare the best we can for the December Days.
Permanent Watch, September 20th, 2007****************************

Presidio Permanente contro la costruzione della nuova base Usa a Vicenza
Via Ponte Marchese
c.p. 303 36100 Vicenza
comunicazione@nodalmolin.it
www.nodalmolin.it