The Italians are compliant people. This equation is a complete description of the last-years-Italy. Three governments, none of them elected by citizens, have given the final blow to the public universitary and educational system, have changed with the Jobs Act the “work rights” in “history of work rights” and have devasted territories with useless and imposed big infrastrucuters. No movement and no resistance were able to stop this tendence formed by a mix of austerity and reduction of the cost of labour – despite the worthy attempts and all the micro-conflicts that exist in Italy.
Maybe that's the reason why Renzi can talk of growth in the newspaper by showing dates (false or incomplete) on the decrease of unemployment rates. The country is recovering - he argues - and young people find more easily the job, they store credits for the pension and there are no social problems because no one claims them. Trade Unions tried to move critics but they were immediately shushed. If there were some problems in the Parliament with the balance of seats, they were simply resolved with some favour in terms of laws and reforms.
Well, we know very well that this image of Italy is mystified and it does not fit with the one of commitees, precarious collectives, migrants, indipendent trade unions that struggle every day and carry out a work of alternative resistance. The problem is that it is very hard to spread these struggles due to the “italian movements swamp”. But in the North-East of Italy, in particular in Veneto, we cannot say that political struggles have being kept alone or not linked together, on the contrary several mobilitations have signed the cartography of our territories.
The first mobilitation concerns industrial areas. For more than a month one of the first important struggles can be seen with the workers of the Nek in Monselice and with the porters of Prix warehouse in Grisignano, where big industries like Prix have not waited too much for the incentives given by Renzi: layoffs and reinstatements with lower salaries and less rights, in which the reinstatement is like a new hiring that allows Prix to get 516.000 € of tax cut for the next three years. A proposal you can not refuse. And why not taking this opportunity to erase an uncomfortable trade union like Adl Cobas? That's the reason why the resistance of the workers is so strong and blocks the gates of warehouses and strikes even by opposing to the police oppression. A real battle for income and for rights that contrast the system of Veneto, led by Lega Nord that on the principle of work found an ethos and a political constituency. But Zaia [President of the region] can hide his submission to the interests of big investors and of the companies behind his institutional racism that classifies as insignificant any immigrants’ struggles.
And here we could open to a multitude which is mobilising nowadays. If it is real that immigrants are the main actors for these struggles for the income, it is also true that they do not share the same legal and material status of the last migrants that have arrived: the asylum seekers. A presence, the one of these refugees that come from a framework of poverty or war, who can be found in the local hubs, on the streets of the towns when they are kept alone, in front of Prefectures and Commissions in order to require the documents like residency permit and asylum permit. Although migration involves all Italy and Europe, in the North-East of Italy there is a mixture of administrative, political and social particularities that makes the situation hard: it is evident on the statements on refugees of the right wing town councils, first of all those of Bitonci (Padua) and Brugnaro (Venice), and on the short circuit between City Council and Prefecture, incapable to offer a respectable welcome but very able to worsen migrants conditions. So, migrants by the side of civil society never stopped to promote a widespread welcome, not based on big concentrations that take them away form the citizenship. Real social coalitions among organized groups and associations work together in order to affirm denied citizenship rights, just like the learning of italian language and of the right to housing. A really not subterranean activity that doesn't watch only to its backyard, but truly knows that the problem of welcome is the second moment of the migration's issues: the first one is the controls and the blocks of borders, more and more dangerous because of the restrictive application of Schengen. The peculiarity of Northern-East regions of Italy, as a border land, lies on the expectable danger of closure on Brennero’s and Gorizia's border. Practicing a form of welcoming demands from below by claiming rights for migrants means to contrast any kind of border.
War and misery stand at the base of the giant movements of human being that want to reach Europe in these months. A lot of them are climate refugees that were forced to leave their houses due to the increase of the average temperature of the planet, the drought, the lack of food and conflicts caused by these events. As a matter of fact, climate change is not a natural phenomenon, it is a catalyzation of the processes begun by the Industrial Revolution in the Western world and nowadays stronger and stronger because of globalization and the energetic model based on foxil fuels. So if we take the Cop 21 agreements (taken without any big protests because of the emergency state) that fix the limit of 2 grades on the increase of the average temperature of the Earth, we should immediatly agree with those committees that from Marche to Molise [central and southern regions of Italy] are protesting against the projects of off-shore drillings in the Adriatic Sea. We should not drill to find new hydrocarbon resources. The vitality and the importance of environmental struggles is also confirmed by the campaign for the social referendum. It developed inside the Stop Devastation and Pillage's network and is bound to get consultations able to gather different but complementary prioirities: ban on drilling, new policies that support public school, the end of Jobs Act and the reaffirmation of water as common.
But even the North East of Itay is full of networks, of committees, of movements that fight for a climate justice and for a revolution on the model of development of our territories. A revolution that wants to make an end to mega projects, which devastate the environment and are imposed to the communities (lot of times thanks to ad hoc laws, like Sblocca Italia or Legge Obiettivo that modifies the normal patterns of application) and bound to transform potential commons into chances of private profit.
It exists an intense geography of movements that unites the Venice Lagoon to the Trentino Alto Adige. Committees that fight against Mose, Big Ships, the uncontrolled concrete overdepvelopment of the territory, TAV [high speed train] and for the quality of air that we breathe and so on.
A network that wait for an important event. The 8th of March, in Venice, the Intergovernatamental Conference will be held between Italy and France. It is useless to remember that a crucial point of discussion will be the realisation of the high speed line Turin-Lion. Val Susa Commitees confirmed their presence to explain, once again, their disagreement with the project. We, in the North East, have to widen this date especially from a qualitative point of view, we have to transform this day in a mobilitation against all big infrastrucuters, for a real and right model of development freed from corruption. Everything must be strongly supported in front of the delegates of our government that will gather in Venice. We need to deploy the map of the environmental committees need to spread our claims: we will unite what they want to keep divided so that we will become stronger.
March 8th is the top moment of a week of mobilitations. The beginning will be on the First of May, historical day for the rights of migrants, in which city networks for solidarity will gather in Padua for a sit in under the Prefecture: in Padua is located the Commission for the requests of asylum status that concern great part of the Northern East area and it is one of the worst in Italy for the number of denied asylum status requests. Then we will go, as decided at the meeting at the Social Center Pedro, to the March 5th, day in which all the conflicts regarding the job's world and income from every corner of the region will meet: we will claim the only expulsion we want to do, the one not conerning migrants but companies that exploit and make profits on people’s lives.
Hence, a really important week in which all rivers, from the bigger one to smaller one, can gather together in a map that shows the elements of the common territory of democracy, of freedom from work and solidarity. And we think it will be the first moment to contrast who affirms that we are a compliant people.