Why we will return to Genoa, Italy on October 20th by Francisco Rojas, genoaResistance

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Why we will return to Genoa, Italy on October 20th




On August 3rd I visited Genoa to meet with GSF Legal and find out the current situation of the prisoners and the activities of the legal team. As I made my way through a blisteringly hot
Summer afternoon, looking for the new legal office, I , coincidentally, passed through the Piazza Limonda. The significance was lost on me because I was searching for a particular street. From the
corner of my eye I noticed a flower display on the fence surrounding the church in the Piazza, but it wasn't until I saw the graphitied street sign that I realized where I was.

'Limonda' had been changed to 'Carlo Guilliani'.

Then I recognized the graphiti on the side of a bar from the photographs.

Carlo had been murdered right here......






I had been primarily in the IMC during the Anti-g8 Mobilization (and had enough traumatic experiences there, to be sure), but I had never visited this spot since he was shot down in that scene
unforgettably caught by the camera's eye.

Life has a way of reminding you what's important, if only you are willing to listen.

I confess that I had not really wanted to return to Genoa on that day. On the day I had left Genoa, Sunday the 22nd of July, the day after the midnight raid, there had been a feeling of
dazed resignation as the IMC was being dismantled and it was being made clear that we could not stay and work. All of us were in shock, whether we admitted it or not. While we had reported on the
senseless police violence on the streets and the wholesale targeting of non-violent protestors by riot cops, it had still been abstracted and within an understandable context. Then there was the
midnight raid.

It was so extreme and unjustified that it left us speechless. Sure we knew that the Authorities had in the past, and would in the future, target innocent people 'playing by the rules' if
it suited the Authorities to do so. There have been countless cases, whether Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, Mateotti, Steven Bikko, the Bologna train station Bombing in 1980, and on and on and
on........

Still, we didn't really believe that they would be so extreme as to beat bloody sleeping people who had only come here because it was quiet and a place away from the violence of the
streets.

We didn't believe that they would beat senseless people who's only crime was being in the street between the two buildings at the wrong moment.

We didn't believe that they would savagely beat people who really wouldn't resist at a quiet moment in the middle of the night.

Our experiences on the streets should have taught us better, but even we had departmentalized the violence as 'over there' and not 'here'. 'over there' the police would beat the innocent,
but 'here' we were still part of a society of norms and standards.

The truth is simple. That people were being beaten and terrorized was not because of the security of the g8 or the citizens of Genoa: it wasn't because of the active non violent tactics
of Tutti Bianche or the physically violent tactics of Black Block (infiltrated by Agent Provocateurs or not): and it was definitely not because of confusion or poor training of the riot police. It
was because of what we believed, and for no other reason. The midnight raid proved it.

They said that they were looking for weapons, but they didn't search most people, and I was amazed, when I got back to the IMC floor to see my backpack unopened and untouched. Could they
seriously have thought there were weapons and not even conducted a basic search?

We had thought that they would want our videos as evidence, but they left our pile untouched (though they took a few cameras through some perverse desire). Could they be looking for
evidence and not take the most obvious items?

It was an act of terror and nothing else.

It is so clear, that even to have to make the case seems absurd to me.

Carlo was shot in the head at close range. His killer raised the gun, aimed carefully, and cold bloodedly murdered him. The exact person the police murdered, and the exact time and place
they murdered him was probably coincidental, but given what the police did elsewhere, there is no doubt in my mind that it was planned and premeditated by the security forces.

Who they beat in the gymnasium or on the street in front of the IMC was also probably coincidental, but the beatings themselves were not.

Even who they arrested as they were leaving Genoa was a pure terror tactic. I personally know the Susan Thomas who was arrested with the PublixTheater troupe (No Borders) and the
suggestion that a life long Quaker (a famous and long established religion advocating pacifism as one of it's central tenets) who was in the IMC almost the entire time, was out rampaging as part of
'Black Block' is so absurd that's it's beyond comment. I have no doubt that all the rest of the charges against the other prisoners are as ridiculous.

The arrests and beatings were and are intended to scare the moderates and centrists away, push the radicals to extremism and split our movement into the 'goodies' and 'badies'. They want
the moderates to shun the radicals and the radicals to shun the moderates (who is 'good' and who is 'bad' will depend on which side you are looking from)

Don't let the security forces get away with this blatant manipulation!

Even in an European Union that encourages this (don't forget Gothenburg), even in an Italy with actual Fascists in the government, and even in a world were the Corporate Media
relentlessly supports Globalization we are not powerless!

We are going back to Genoa on October 20th and we are going to show to the world what happened and that we will not be dupped by the security force's subversion tactics. We are going to
build on the success of Genoa (and despite the Authorities attempt to cover us in blood and despair it was a success for so many to come and cooperate despite the campaign of terror). And we are
going to build a stronger, healthier and more sustainable movement.

We will do it because it is the right thing to do.

We will do it because even under Berlusconi, Italy is not without hope.

We will do it because we brought a dream to Genoa once and we can do it again.

We will do it because it is the only way to honor our prisoners, our martyred dead and injured.

See you in Genoa on October 20th.




francisco rojas, genoaResistance





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