One hundred thousand of Indivisibles

12 / 11 / 2018

English version of the report on Saturday's massive anti-racist demonstration in Rome.

«These streets, this day represent a decisive turning point. We are here from the four corner of Italy, we hail from very different social and political paths that today merged to say “no” to State racism and institutional sexism and to reaffirm that Salvini’s decree is unjust. This square is saying with one voice that this legislative decree must not be approved as law!» These are the words that opened the last speech of yesterday’s demonstration in Rome, while thousands of people were still marching towards S. Giovanni square.

There will be time to properly read this day and its whole adjustment path, so to articulate the many perspective, but it is no doubt that we are facing a political event of historical significance remained unseen for a long time. An event that might reverse the reactionary process so well depicted by the governmental coalition (Lega and 5Stelle). One hundred thousand people displayed their willingness to disobey to unjust laws, to stay “indivisible” (as the keyword of the demonstration was #Indivisibili). A term chosen for its capability to engage an imagery that breaks the route – divisive and hierarchical – the power is charting on skin color, gender and class. The extraordinary day Rome experienced increases in value if considering the blackout of mainstream media, who deliberately decided to emphasize the nasty streets of Turin that merged, in the name of a “yes” said to high-speed rails and major works, PD, Forza Italia, Lega, Casapound, industrialists, few unions and the worst side of this country. 

The knitting of paths and narratives is the clearer feature of this demonstration. It was not a summation, but an interweaving that discloses its power, with no need to become pure evocation. The voices, the signs, the slogans and the speeches unveil an opening common space where the thousands of local experiences on solidarity, cooperation, mutualism and social struggle can intersect and empower. The same space recalled, many times during the march, the ultimate continuity with the demonstration of the last 10th February in Macerata, when the whole country replied en masse to the attempted racist and fascist carnage carried out by Luca Traini. Such response displayed a social and political network apart from both Marco Minniti’s “democratic securitarianism” and the national-populist forces that, a month later, won the elections. 

The march proved that the opposition to Salvini’s decree has to be practiced, and not only preached. Many speeches underlined the willingness to reconvene in front of the Parliament on November, 27th, when the decree will be definitively approved.  

From Lodi to Riace, across occupiers and day laborer from the south of Italy, the real treasure of this multitude is its distance from any previous political perspective. We are facing a movement that no decree nor institution will ever wipe out, since it already exist, is part of this country and has no intention to be smashed. 

All this, despite a government that overcomes the 80 pages of an infamous decree, guilty of whipping up a war against the lasts. Hate, xenophobia, repression, social control: the decree law begins attacking the applicants for international protection and arrives to any active form of struggle, such as road blocking and house occupying. Plus, we are facing also Pillon’s decree, that exacerbates a patriarchal configuration of society, and a workfare set passed off as basic income.

Yesterday emerged a not at all assumed awareness of all these contradictions, described through the common language of liberation and self-determination. But what arouse above all was the courage to pursue the path towards humanity and solidarity, the same challenge Mimmo Lucano issued long time ago and restated yesterday at the end of the march. A challenge that has also to be transnational, as underlined by Iuventa’s activists, lately in Berlin for another oceanic demonstration with the same name, Indivisible, and the same contents.

*** Traduzione a cura di Anna Clara Basilicò

Photo of: Sherwood Foto