BLOCK G8 2009!

gipfelsoli | 10.05.2009 11:44 | Analysis | Globalisation | Social Struggles

Direct actions, demonstrations, appeals and events against the G8 summit in Italy

Gipfelsoli Newsletter - Globalized Solidarity
------------------------------------------------------ www.gipfelsoli.org --

BLOCK G8 2009!

Direct actions, demonstrations, appeals and events against the G8 summit in
Italy

In recent weeks progress is being made in the mobilization against the G8 summit
in Italy. Particularly the planned transfer of the G8 site to the earthquake
region of L´Aquila and to Rome (1) have caused intense debates and great
interest in the present state of preparations.

“220 million Euros already being designated for La Maddalena can be saved“,
Berlusconi stated, stressing to give reasons for the transfer to L´Aquila.
Sardinian precarious workers object that with reference to the expenses for the
construction of the G8-facilities planned for future elite conferences and
luxury holidays in the archipelago northeast of Olbia, 320 million euros “have
been thrown out of the window.“ (2) Altogether the holding of the G8 summit on
La Maddalena was supposed to cost 400 million Euros. It is not clear what will
happen with the allegedly remaining 180 million: do they serve for the
completion of the far advanced measures on Sardinia or will they really benefit
the disaster victims as promised by the Berlusconi government?

Only last week the security plannings on La Maddalena – at least on the “first
level“ – were declared completed. (3)

Events and protests should be held as far away as possible from the summit area,
the Schengen Agreement about renouncing identity checks at crossborder traffic
should be appealed. At airports and ferry harbours, at several European
harbours with connections to Sardinia as well as at the borders to Italy,
border controls and longer waiting times were predicted. The summit area on La
Maddalena and the cruise ship MSC Fantasia were planned to be surrounded by
three safety belts in which traffic should be restricted or rather stopped,
ferry crossings to La Maddalena were to be applied for. The sea around La
Maddalena archipelago should be locked up around a wide area, flights of about
50,000 passengers diverted to Olbia. Red Cross, hospitals, police and fire
brigade have had a practice manoeuvre in Olbia.

Popular Kitchen “Carlo Giuliani“

Besides a supposed saving of costs the summit is planned to be transferred to
prevent eventual protests to the greatest possible extent: “I don´t believe
that anti-globalists will have the courage to organize violent demonstrations
in this earthquake-stricken region“, Berlusconi stated. (4) Leftist groups and
activists although are present in the Abruzzi right from the start and have
appealed for support of the persons affected by the earthquake. They commit
themselves in camps taking matters into their own hands, in operating large
kitchens, in providing further infrastructure as well as in delivering material
aids and healthy food.
Already on the same day of the earthquake the initiative “Epicentro Sociale“
(solidarity epicentre) was founded. (5)

The regional council of the Rifondazione Comunista attacked Berlusconi´s comment
that leftist protesters would not come into the disaster area: “I want to inform
the president that the anti-globalists arrived together with the Civil Guard –
and in many places even before them“, according to the regional council of
Rifondazione Comunista . (6)

Hundreds of volunteers of Rifondazione Comunista, social centres, environment
groups, Catholic trainees and social forums have distributed food, blankets and
medicine to the earthquake-stricken population and gave all kinds of assistance.
The camp kitchen in San Bagio was already on the first day named after Carlo
Giuliani, who was shot dead by police during the G8 summit in 2001.

On the Italian web-platform Indymedia the helpers raise heavy reproaches against
the state-run aid organizations in the camps and in general and denounce an
“extortive pressure for national unity“. (7)

On the 10th of April cars and a van with supplies was stopped by the
Carabinieri. The transport was organized by students of Naples, material and
companions were on their way to a self-governed camp. The convoy was stopped
and taken to the provincial police headquarters. According to the Carabinieri,
the self-governed aid programmes were a “masked extensive plundering
manoeuvre“. Only when the news circulated in the Italian media the convoy was
released.

Meanwhile there is the appeal “Appropriate the mountains, bury G8!“ (8) calling
upon the “Global Multitude“ to seize the opportunity in the Abruzzi to build
“sustainable, forward thinking communities,” 10 years after the Seattle group
“Diggers 2.0“ appealed for “Solidarity out of the ruins of Neoliberalism“:
“We need solutions of the crisis from down below, an opposing power of social
movements with a shovel in its hand getting ready to build a post-capitalist
world. Call upon the global multitude to come to Abruzzo from 7th to 11th of
July to help rebuild Abruzzo“.

Militarized disaster control organization

The extraordinary ministerial council convened on the occasion of the state of
emergency has appointed Franco Gabrielli as prefect of L´Aquila. Gabrielli
started his career with the political police “Digos“ in Imperia and changed
later to the head office in Rome. He was responsible for the police conducting
a coordinated action against the organization succeeding the “Red Brigades“,
after which two arrested persons were found responsible for the deaths of
Massimo D´Antona and Marco Biagi. After the operation he became chief of the
internationally operating secret service “Servizio Centrale Antiterrorismo“. A
few years ago he drew up together with the current Chief of Police Antonio
Manganelli an investigation practice manual.

„L´Aquila is militarized“, it seems like „practical military occupation
exercises“, claim people who feel victimized by the actions. (9) “The
earthquake lays reality open as it really is: separated between rich and poor“.
The population and helpers obviously get harassed by police forces at the
service of the emergency apparatus of state: “They run after us, they forbid
us, they command us, they tell us off when we try to take back our houses“.
Reports in opposition to the militarization document that under the earthquake
ruins numerous migrants are buried and not turning up in the official
statistics. (10) A Romanian nurse who was about to rescue her belongings
together with some friends out of the house she had lived in, was arrested
together with her companions and taken to court for looting in specially held
proceedings.

Newspapers were reporting extensively about this and thus intensified the
anti-Romanian atmosphere, however when the woman was acquitted the press
abruptly lost their interest.

Impregilo

The power of the earthquake was not the cause for the full extent of the damages
as much as speculative, grossly negligent methods of construction and neglect of
regulations. In the centre of critique is the Italian company Impregilo (11)
which had constructed many of the collapsed buildings. According to enquiries
the houses were manufactured partly with concrete mixed with sea sand. Steal
reinforcement corroded therefore much faster, and the houses weren’t stable
anymore. Impregilo used to belong to the Fiat group and is part of a consortium
of Benetton, Gavio and Ligresti today. After Berlusconi’s election the Impregilo
share rapidly shot up. The company is planning to realize a project of prestige
costing into the billions, the Messina bridge between Sicily and the mainland,
one of the election promises of Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s career itself is connected with a construction industry notorious
for corruption; he is supposed to have received funds from the secret lodge
Propaganda 2.(12) Impregilo has drawn attention to itself with numerous
scandals and is responsible for the militarization of Naples´ “rubbish
scandal“. The company also has not completed construction of a refuse
incineration plant in spite of the completion of the contract in 1998. As a
result a court had charged 27 managers and politicians.

Impregilo is constructing a tunnel for the high speed train TAV (13) in the Susa
valley north of Turin. This project is provoking fierce and militant resistance
from the population over the last 20 years, because the work releases natural
uranium and asbestos. Supported by activists of social centres they had
occupied the construction site in 2006. After the police had cleared and
afterwards occupied the site themselves, their supplies were cut off by
blockading protesters. After 20 hours the police gave up. The result was a
temporary halt to construction, but in March Berlusconi announced the
construction to go on again. (14)
International climate activists as well are criticizing Impregilo. The company
holds the biggest share of a planned aluminium power station in Iceland, is
constructing world-wide numerous controversial dam projects (15) and intends to
build nuclear power plants in Italy.(16)

Protests have strengthened against G8

Since the announcement that the Summit will be transferred to L’ Aquila and
Rome, plans for doing protests are increasing over the international
mailing-lists. Also in Berlin, there will be a demonstration called “We are
your crisis”.(17)

First protests against the G8 have already taken place in Italy. The
G8-Ministers of Agriculture have already met in Castelbrando. Before that,
activists of the group called “Health and Environment” had written “NO OGM” (no
genetically modified organisms) into a field, which was unable to be overlooked
from an aerial view. But to “avoid instrumentalisation and polemics” they
announced “on advice of the police president Damiano” to remove the signature
before the G8-Meeting themselves.

At the beginning of the G8-Meeting, there was a public Assembly against the G8
Agricultural Ministers meeting in Treviso (18). 3,000 police had been
mobilised, flights in the area were banned, police controls and limited access
were installed. There have been protest initiatives and actions of anarchists,
disobbedienti, and activists from the social centers as well as the Italian
federation of farmers, demonstrating against environmental destruction,
industrial agriculture, Nano- and genetic technology. In Rome, workers in the
field of agriculture were on strike for eight hours. Activists of Ya Basta
fenced in the Benetton-Store in Treviso with barbed wire to protest against the
exploitation of workers in Patagonia through Benetton.
Before the police and press massively began a propaganda campaign against
certain actions of a “black bloc”, because there was a call for an assembly to
“radically change the status quo, to start a broadly received protest, in which
the desire for direct action can be discovered and coordinated”(19). The media
sounded the “black bloc-alarm” (20).
One day before the meeting of the Ministers of Agriculture, in Ca’ Tron in
Roncade a laboratory for experiments with genetically modified organisms was
“sanctioned from below” (21).

After activists accessed the area, they were throwing stones on the green houses
and surveillance cameras and were spray painting “No OGM” on the walls: “With
this action we want to unmask the hypocracy of those who see genetically
modified organisms as an experiment with positive output towards the solution
of environmental, economic and social problems. This is our welcoming ceremony
to the delegations of those that believe, that they can rule the world on the
backs of billions of people.” The paper was signed with “Social Centers of the
North East”. Shortly after that, the police announced a manhunt and arrested 4
persons in a car, who supposedly had been on the flight from the crime scene
(22).

Some days later, the police searched six “flats of ex-disobbedienti” from
Treviso and the social center Ubik-Lab in Ponzano Veneto (Treviso). Supposedly
10 people had been identified during the action in Ca’ Tron. As incriminating
evidence, a Computer, hard drive, paint pots and maps of Ca’ Tron, in which the
area around the center has been marked, shoes and brochures were been
confiscated. The police claimed that the activists were planning another
“attack” during the G8-Meeting inside the Red Zone. The speaker of the attacked
Social Centers are declaring the accusations and Razzias as “ridiculous and
surreal” (23). Accusations include breach of public peace, and property
destruction for five people in the heavier case with destruction of an
electricity distributor for the climatisation of the green houses, the windows
of the laboratory and of four surveillance cameras (24).

In Siracusa/ Sicily, a demonstration of up to 3,000 people against the meeting
of the Ministers of Environment of the G8-countries, who were meeting – like in
the Northern Italian Castelbrando – in a historic castle, has been the peak of a
two-month long mobilisation and was seen by all participants as very positive
(25). The most important result of the action has been to transform the broad
collection of groups (26) against the G8-Environment-Summit into a “steady
coordination”, which stands as a movement (27) of diversity, which is opposing
the speculation and destruction”, that on Sicily and even cross-border are of
really heavy (28), “from now on, there will be support, starting with the fight
against the erection of gas digesters in the Petrochemie complex of
Priolo-Augusta”.

A very important and present number of participants have been the numerous
self-organised migrants at the protests (29), who raised clear demands on
banners to the Italian government, the prefectures and the Police Chief.
Leading up to the demonstration, a three day long counter summit had been held,
at which numerous initiatives had been involved together with activists from a
broad political spectrum – including the labor unions Cobas, Rifondazione
Comunista and several Social Centres, which on Sicily are already fighting
against the planned construction- (30), Industry (31) and NATO-large scale
projects. (32). They are criticising and fighting them, because they are adding
to incredibly heavy damage of the environment and the living conditions (33) of
the people, which are already quite poor (34), and which is only serving the
profits of business interests in the national and global political and context.
Moreover the engagement of activists from further regions of Italy´s South has
been noticed.

The motto of the counter summit has been: “An attack on the Island of the
Future: the Environment-G8. Nuclear power, waste incineration, environmental
pollution, garbage, military bases. We are not going to pay for your crisis
with our land!”. The 22nd of April was dedicated to the “Array of effective,
independent to any profit interests, proposals on the topic of Environment”,
while on the next day a “round table” – parallel to the general strike of the
unions – “recent topics like work, precarity and societal fights” were
addressed, whereas the pressure – transported over the media, which had not
payed any attention to the contents of the G8-Protestors – on the upcoming
demonstration more and more were changing the athmosphere (35).

Another part of the success of the initiatives against the Environment Summit
was probably the political closeness (36) of the demonstrating summit
protestors, despite the repression of the security offices and the signals of
appreciation shown by the inhabitants, which – actually waiting for the
demonstration (37) – was in assembled in large numbers at the sides of the
streets.
Videos show pictures that prove, how officials tried to create a climate related
to the G8 2001 in Genoa.
The police showed over days and weeks in diverse ways an absolute drive for
surveillance and announced explicitly their high preparedness for repression:
“Since days the citizens are living in a kind of induced nightmare, because the
Police Force and the prefecture had warned those involved: Everything is
possible, we can not offer no security in the field of public order: the “Black
Block” is just underneath us.” (38). Only the Mayor of Siracus tried to mitigate
the climate of fear, totally the opposite of his colleague in Treviso, who
advised the shop keepers personally to keep their shops closed. But most of the
business owners were not paying attention to the Mayor, but to the buzz of the
media and the security organisations (39).

Leading up to the meeting hard controls were carried out in cities including
Catania (40) and Messina and even complete closing (41) of the train
Messina-Siracusa had taken place. The travellers have been forced to go on with
another train, potential counter summit participants and demonstrators were
bullied and partially blocked from going to Siracusa in time for the
demonstration. In the wake of street controls, car and bus searches (42),
arrests and bans (43) have been performed, eventually because someone had an
axe handle with him because he was working in the field of agriculture and some
stones he was collecting because of their beautiful shape.
Even if before the protest, the demonstrators have been differentiate in their
disagreements about the cutting of their rights through repression and
surveillance, during the demonstration and at the big barricade with which the
accessing street to the castle in which the G8 Environmental Ministers were
meeting, have been blocked, the demonstrators appeared enclosed and loudly
voiced their opinion (44). There were also presentations about the G8 in Genoa
and remembering Carlo Giuliani (45).

When the demonstration was starting with a few hundred participants, they were
applauded by the citizens at the side of the streets. The support of the local
people was present on the whole protest route. A big group of the Ultras
Siracusa was greeting the demonstrators with loud chants about the topic of
repression (46). On the way to the final rally point the demonstration grew
towards some thousand people.

The acceptance of the population was clearly the beginnings of a “Permanent
cooperation against speculation and environmental destruction” in Sicily with
coordination and courage of the participants, who against repressive conditions
(47) had sucessfully made the first large protest against the G8 since Genoa in
2001. As the numerous video reports showed, the final rally proved to be happy
and joyous, and fully of empathetic thanks to all of the march participants,
the local people, and to the lawyers of the “Democratic Forum” who had given
their legal support.

The need for protection to demonstrate will stay exceedingly high until the very
last moment. Italy has seen months of new, sharp demonstation regulations (49),
setting organisers under heavy pressure.

The G8 Environmental Minister meeting in Sicily was organised by the Italian
Environmental Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo (50), who, along with her family,
owns a number of polluting businesses. She belongs to the so-called
“Institutional Playgirls” of the Prime Minister, who has made his success as a
media-tycoom on the recipe of “tits, ass and pink-colored dreams.”

Also in Sardinia the protest movement had come. The “Mesa Sarda. A fora su G8”
(“Sardinien Table. Out with the G8”) plans for social justice and to fight for
national soverignty, and organised a meeting called “All nations without a
government.” The meeting is planned for 8-9 July, with a demonstration planned
on the 10th in Olbia near La Maddalena.
“We from the anti-colonial Sardinian Independence Movement (51) will denounce
how we have been betrayed and taken advantage of like in a bad joke, and in our
country the hopes of the Sardinians have been used like a throw-away foot rag.
First we were fooled by the Italian state about infrastructural improvements,
the road between Sassari and Olbia, that is, and about work opportunities
raining on a huge scale over a country already exhausted by unemployment. Then
they diverted the means designated for these infrastructures and annexed the
entire hotel plant running, the touristic harbour and the plants on the
Arsenale site on La Maddalena, financed by us Sardinians, to the president of
the employers´ association“
Press release of Mesa Sarda concerning the G8-location transfer (52).

In an interview Mesa Sarda member Bastiano Cumpostu explained: „We from Mesa
Sarda A fora su G8 have issues in common with the no globals. We don´t agree
that our region is going to be used as a living room for the G8 heads of
state“.
„The summit participants will hear from us“, announced also Francesco Caruso,
ex-parliamentarian with Rifondazione Comunista and earlier representative of
the „disobbedienti“ in an interview for the Sardinian daily newspaper L´Unione
Sarda.

The ex-parliamentarian with Rifondazione Comunista criticizes the striving for
the absence of every political protest (53):
„(Berlusconi) is taking advantage of the drama of the homeless for propaganda
reasons and at the same time intends to cut the right to demonstrate of
opponents of globalization“.

„The fact that the leaders of the world hide on an island is a sign of weakness.
For years now the critics of globalization point to economic and environmental
risks. Now, all our predictions are happening, and the leaders of the world are
barricading themselves in“. Francesco Caruso (54)

The announced protests against the G8 university presidents´ summit from 17th to
19th of May in Turin (55) are probably going to be exciting. The movement
against the „Gelmini Reform“ is calling for blockading the meeting (56). The
broad protest movement against mass discharges and reforms in the education
sector and the loss of autonomy last year had resulted in partly fierce and
militant mass protests.

Already in the run-up to the meeting of the G8-ministers of agriculture supposed
police insights were sensationally propagated through the media about planned
protests with supposed preparations of militant actions of a „black bloc“. The
construct of the „black bloc“ is going around in the Italian public since the
G8 in Genoa in 2001. In court trials police and public prosecutor´s office have
tried to make the „black bloc“ as an „international terroristic organization“ a
fixed juristical point and to sentence activists to heavy imprisonments for
membership in the same.

„Security circles“ suppose to have observed since one year that „small Anarchist
groups“ out of France, Great Britain and Germany were spying out the region
around La Maddalena.

Links

(1)

UK Indymedia

BLOCK G8 2009!