These are some notes of the actions against the EU inter-governmental meeting to discuss a European constitution that occurred in Rome on October the 4th, one the biggest post Genoa street mobilisations by the Italian movement. The notes should be read as mere observations, they are the reflections of one person who has been in Italy for a only 2 months. The impossibility to create a general understanding of the Italian movement(s) should be taken into consideration, there is too much complicated history to make more than the most tentative understandings.
I arrived in Rome 2 weeks before the actions, but not for them. The mood around several social centres in relation to the 4th was quite low, very little preparation work had been done, especially politically, of what was to be protested in the first place. Some social centres like Acrobats and Laurentina and some of the disobedienti social centres were putting more energy into preparations. I had little contact in this respect however. The general feeling of apathy I witnessed in some sectors need not be viewed in a negative form. It can be seen as a resistance to spending energy on a project people feel has few possible positive outcomes. Being apathetic to organising a protest against “some EU thing” in the middle of an area of the city designed by Mussolini is not necessarily a bad thing. To refuse to play on their terms is partly a positive move. This may explain why some groups chose targets in the morning rather focus on the big demo or why others chose to turn up but not do preparatory work.
However it is imposible to avoid the fact that the street demonstrations articulated the ongoing status of crisis and lack of direction for much of the movement, and the inability to conceive politically the significance of the EU meeting, becuase it did mean something, and articulate that to a broader populace. Into this political vaccuum the worst tended to surface in terms of competing factions jostling for political position. What is described here is more a description of how that vacuum manifested itself in the street. Much more anaylis needs be done on what exactly created this situation in terms of finding ways out of the pavlovian reactions to summit meetings. Summit actions need no neccesarily become meaningless if they are able to communicate beyond themselves and raise those issues that need raising.
The actions of the 4th began in via Marconi where people had planned to make street blockades aimed at distrusting the EU meeting. Organised through various social centres the actions only managed to attract 400-500 people and were quickly dispersed by the police and resulted in a few dozen arrests. The most dramatic action of the morning however was the firebombing of the temporary employment agency Adecco, a protest against the exploitation of precarious workers and the nature or precarious work in general. In Italy there is no social benefits for the young unemployed.
At 2 o’clock somewhere between 50-75,000 people assembled at Laurentina station for a march past the Palazzo dei Congressi where the EU meeting was being held. This area, the Eur, was built by Mussolini and is full of massive boulevards, there are no small lanes, no where to run if the police attack. As we marched into the area, down every street there were hundreds, if not thousands, of police. If an attack was decided upon some serious beating could ensue, there was not much chance of fighting our way out.
The most obviously present group at the demo was Rifundazione Communista (the refounded communist party) who certainly mobilised more people that anyone else. However what concerns us here is much more the activities within the area of “the movement” outside the specifically institutionalised groups. Here the most obvious group was the Disobedienti. Another small grouping called Europosizione were the most obvious combative section, though there were several others, and many, many more who perhaps had more subtle means of expressing themselves.
Of Europosozione there is not so much to say. In corporate media terms they would have constituted much of the “Black Bloc”, though there were others but it can hardly be said that there was much of a black bloc to begin with. Those that I saw operating within this mode hardly impressed. There are 2 interesting comparisons to make in terms of behavioral links with the disobedienti. One is the way both create spaces in front of their march to separate themselves and exclude others. The DI do it through cordons of marshals, EO by throwing firecrackers making any form of communication or potential collaborative participation fairly impossible.. At least you can say that the DI tried to communicate with others through a loud speaker, not so for EO. I imagine most people on the march merely felt intimidated, some who might want to have joined probably didn’t. It needs reminding of course that the EO was not the only combative or black bloc esk grouping, merely the most obvious. Once the chaos insued it is completely impossible to attribute activities to them specifically, there were several other smaller militant groups.
As we approached the Palazzo on the opposite side of the road was a bank. Mysteriously all the other buildings had their windows covered with heavy metal roller doors, not so the bank. Unfortunately a dozen or so people were salivating too much to notice this and began trashing the bank. Even a whole spare sheet of glass was mysteriously left in front of the bank. Now I’m not at all opposed to people trashing banks at the appropriate moment but if this wasn’t a set up I could hardly imagine how much more obvious it would need to be. As the authorities seemed to want people to brake this stuff I would suggest not to do it and find something else. Several other bad tactics were also employed like throwing things at the police from round the corner of buildings whilst other people are standing right infront of the cops leaving them open to getting a beating.
By far the worst spectacle of the day, and one apparently greatly celebrated later that evening, was the theatre of the Disobedienti. Upon arriving in front of the Pallazo dei Congressi the DI began their preparations for what had obviously, and as others confirmed to me, a pre-arranged plan. Now I had heard about all this stuff about the DI negotiating spectacles with the cops but had decided to keep an open mind during my time in Italy. As within any activist circles there are large amounts of sectarianism and rivalry. I had been interested in many of the ideas if the DI, they seemed to be prepared to experiment in an attempt to escape much of the ideological baggage of previous generations. However I was severely shocked at by their antics on the 4th and began to understand a little more clearly the fierce dislike much of the rest of the movement has towards them.
Separating the protestors from the cops at the top of the street to the Palazzo was a series of metres barricades creating a space about 2 ½ metres wide. What happen next I could hardly believe; the carabinieri removed one section of the barricades to allow space for the DI to spend the next 20 minutes preparing for a mock charge; a women’s only “action”. As the DI lieutenants parked their command post to one side the women and men donned their helmets and padding. The media crowded for position, there must have been close to 50 cameras, both activist and mainstream. As around 70/80 women “charged” the perhaps 400 police they threw rotten fruit and paint bombs. I could hardly believe the seriousness and exertion I could see in some of the women’s faces. Contrasted with the meaninglessness of this theatre it made me feel embarrassed. At least I could see the odd smile of people throwing over the odd piece of fruit. I found it strange that the cops would consent to this bit of theatre which meant some lower down the order got covered in paint and fruit and looked rather silly in front of the media. But then everyone looked stupid, the more seriously they took this mock display the stupider they appeared.
What this accord with the police meant was that the DI agreed to behave and enforce a set of rules within a broader collective space that no one else had agreed to. Therefore when some chose to disrupt this spectacle by throwing rocks and bottles at the cops, after all it might have appeared that there was a confrontation going on, the DI officers came in to restore order, to essentially perform the role of the police, in threatening and even physically assaulting those who refused their authority as stage managers and directors of this pathetic spectacle. They preferenced their contract with the police and the media over maintaining solidarity with other demonstrators. In fact their shields were deployed in both directions. On one side in simulated form against the police but at the back physically with a wall of shields to keep other protesters off the stage, continually evicting people whose actions or presence might have revealed the spectacular nature of the actions to the audience, ie those who would later consume these images.
Whilst it might be theorised that the DI are protagonists of conflict who distribute that conflict through the media they also rely on the maintenance of the distribution of smooth images. That is they rely on the authority of the media to give authority to their images. To rupture that mediascape also means to rupture their authority because they rely on the media’s authority to produce their own. With these actions they create “conflict” within the mediascape but not against it. Besides this even more unbelievable that the DI seemed to have forgotten what happen at Genoa when they made an accord with the police, declared a spectacular war and got a real one. If that hadn’t disproved the tactic, what does it take!
What these media actions do is exactly the contrary of the biopolitics the DI supposedly employ. Instead of bringing the presence of the body to this action they appear more as the “ghosts of neo-liberalism” which, in their previous incarnation as the Tutte Bianche, they were fighting against being. Why? Because they are acting for future memory. That is they perform their actions in the present thinking about how they will appear in the future as documents of the past. So in fact they become ghosts for the media, not present bodily at all during the actions, but are acting for their re-presentation in the future.
But then ideological contradictions are not something foreign to the DI. And in someways it is possible to appreciate this. The project of creating some kind of purist politics as seems to be so prevalent in anarchist or orthodox marxist politics is to be thoroughly rejected. But when they call the name of the multitude but treat people as a mass, when they speak of a movement of movements but desire to hegemonise under a centralised leninist model the form of organisation, these are contradictions that it is not possible to ignore. This desire for hegemony rather than networks, these competing positions seem to push out those spaces hoping to be more open and diffuse where there is much more possibility of experimentation, trust and interaction. Instead it produces reified and stagnant positions in many quarters, not just within the DI, within the movement generally. These tendencies are of course not confined to Italy, it is easy to witness moments of stagnation within a movement, it is the point at which they turn inwards rather than outwards, close spaces rather than open them.
Days End
The day ended eventually when the police got bored of the games and thought it was a time enough to clear the area. A general bit of gassing pushed everyone out fairly quickly, it didn’t make much sense to do much more than strew the street with a few random objects to slow down the police advance. As a police car and small van, presumably carrying delegates, raced up the road and through the crowd it was pelted with rocks smashing a couple of the windows of the van. This was the last of the confrontation I saw.
Perhaps up to 300 000 people mobilised all up for the demonstrations, mostly the 200 – 250 000 in the centre of Rome far from the activities described here. Whilst perhaps these notes have been overly negative the Italian movement is far from uninspiring. What I have observed is certainly not the end, just a different chapter and hopefully not a closed book.
However it is imposible to avoid the fact that the street demonstrations articulated the ongoing status of crisis and lack of direction for much of the movement, and the inability to conceive politically the significance of the EU meeting, becuase it did mean something, and articulate that to a broader populace. Into this political vaccuum the worst tended to surface in terms of competing factions jostling for political position. What is described here is more a description of how that vacuum manifested itself in the street. Much more anaylis needs be done on what exactly created this situation in terms of finding ways out of the pavlovian reactions to summit meetings. Summit actions need no neccesarily become meaningless if they are able to communicate beyond themselves and raise those issues that need raising.
The actions of the 4th began in via Marconi where people had planned to make street blockades aimed at distrusting the EU meeting. Organised through various social centres the actions only managed to attract 400-500 people and were quickly dispersed by the police and resulted in a few dozen arrests. The most dramatic action of the morning however was the firebombing of the temporary employment agency Adecco, a protest against the exploitation of precarious workers and the nature or precarious work in general. In Italy there is no social benefits for the young unemployed.
At 2 o’clock somewhere between 50-75,000 people assembled at Laurentina station for a march past the Palazzo dei Congressi where the EU meeting was being held. This area, the Eur, was built by Mussolini and is full of massive boulevards, there are no small lanes, no where to run if the police attack. As we marched into the area, down every street there were hundreds, if not thousands, of police. If an attack was decided upon some serious beating could ensue, there was not much chance of fighting our way out.
The most obviously present group at the demo was Rifundazione Communista (the refounded communist party) who certainly mobilised more people that anyone else. However what concerns us here is much more the activities within the area of “the movement” outside the specifically institutionalised groups. Here the most obvious group was the Disobedienti. Another small grouping called Europosizione were the most obvious combative section, though there were several others, and many, many more who perhaps had more subtle means of expressing themselves.
Of Europosozione there is not so much to say. In corporate media terms they would have constituted much of the “Black Bloc”, though there were others but it can hardly be said that there was much of a black bloc to begin with. Those that I saw operating within this mode hardly impressed. There are 2 interesting comparisons to make in terms of behavioral links with the disobedienti. One is the way both create spaces in front of their march to separate themselves and exclude others. The DI do it through cordons of marshals, EO by throwing firecrackers making any form of communication or potential collaborative participation fairly impossible.. At least you can say that the DI tried to communicate with others through a loud speaker, not so for EO. I imagine most people on the march merely felt intimidated, some who might want to have joined probably didn’t. It needs reminding of course that the EO was not the only combative or black bloc esk grouping, merely the most obvious. Once the chaos insued it is completely impossible to attribute activities to them specifically, there were several other smaller militant groups.
As we approached the Palazzo on the opposite side of the road was a bank. Mysteriously all the other buildings had their windows covered with heavy metal roller doors, not so the bank. Unfortunately a dozen or so people were salivating too much to notice this and began trashing the bank. Even a whole spare sheet of glass was mysteriously left in front of the bank. Now I’m not at all opposed to people trashing banks at the appropriate moment but if this wasn’t a set up I could hardly imagine how much more obvious it would need to be. As the authorities seemed to want people to brake this stuff I would suggest not to do it and find something else. Several other bad tactics were also employed like throwing things at the police from round the corner of buildings whilst other people are standing right infront of the cops leaving them open to getting a beating.
By far the worst spectacle of the day, and one apparently greatly celebrated later that evening, was the theatre of the Disobedienti. Upon arriving in front of the Pallazo dei Congressi the DI began their preparations for what had obviously, and as others confirmed to me, a pre-arranged plan. Now I had heard about all this stuff about the DI negotiating spectacles with the cops but had decided to keep an open mind during my time in Italy. As within any activist circles there are large amounts of sectarianism and rivalry. I had been interested in many of the ideas if the DI, they seemed to be prepared to experiment in an attempt to escape much of the ideological baggage of previous generations. However I was severely shocked at by their antics on the 4th and began to understand a little more clearly the fierce dislike much of the rest of the movement has towards them.
Separating the protestors from the cops at the top of the street to the Palazzo was a series of metres barricades creating a space about 2 ½ metres wide. What happen next I could hardly believe; the carabinieri removed one section of the barricades to allow space for the DI to spend the next 20 minutes preparing for a mock charge; a women’s only “action”. As the DI lieutenants parked their command post to one side the women and men donned their helmets and padding. The media crowded for position, there must have been close to 50 cameras, both activist and mainstream. As around 70/80 women “charged” the perhaps 400 police they threw rotten fruit and paint bombs. I could hardly believe the seriousness and exertion I could see in some of the women’s faces. Contrasted with the meaninglessness of this theatre it made me feel embarrassed. At least I could see the odd smile of people throwing over the odd piece of fruit. I found it strange that the cops would consent to this bit of theatre which meant some lower down the order got covered in paint and fruit and looked rather silly in front of the media. But then everyone looked stupid, the more seriously they took this mock display the stupider they appeared.
What this accord with the police meant was that the DI agreed to behave and enforce a set of rules within a broader collective space that no one else had agreed to. Therefore when some chose to disrupt this spectacle by throwing rocks and bottles at the cops, after all it might have appeared that there was a confrontation going on, the DI officers came in to restore order, to essentially perform the role of the police, in threatening and even physically assaulting those who refused their authority as stage managers and directors of this pathetic spectacle. They preferenced their contract with the police and the media over maintaining solidarity with other demonstrators. In fact their shields were deployed in both directions. On one side in simulated form against the police but at the back physically with a wall of shields to keep other protesters off the stage, continually evicting people whose actions or presence might have revealed the spectacular nature of the actions to the audience, ie those who would later consume these images.
Whilst it might be theorised that the DI are protagonists of conflict who distribute that conflict through the media they also rely on the maintenance of the distribution of smooth images. That is they rely on the authority of the media to give authority to their images. To rupture that mediascape also means to rupture their authority because they rely on the media’s authority to produce their own. With these actions they create “conflict” within the mediascape but not against it. Besides this even more unbelievable that the DI seemed to have forgotten what happen at Genoa when they made an accord with the police, declared a spectacular war and got a real one. If that hadn’t disproved the tactic, what does it take!
What these media actions do is exactly the contrary of the biopolitics the DI supposedly employ. Instead of bringing the presence of the body to this action they appear more as the “ghosts of neo-liberalism” which, in their previous incarnation as the Tutte Bianche, they were fighting against being. Why? Because they are acting for future memory. That is they perform their actions in the present thinking about how they will appear in the future as documents of the past. So in fact they become ghosts for the media, not present bodily at all during the actions, but are acting for their re-presentation in the future.
But then ideological contradictions are not something foreign to the DI. And in someways it is possible to appreciate this. The project of creating some kind of purist politics as seems to be so prevalent in anarchist or orthodox marxist politics is to be thoroughly rejected. But when they call the name of the multitude but treat people as a mass, when they speak of a movement of movements but desire to hegemonise under a centralised leninist model the form of organisation, these are contradictions that it is not possible to ignore. This desire for hegemony rather than networks, these competing positions seem to push out those spaces hoping to be more open and diffuse where there is much more possibility of experimentation, trust and interaction. Instead it produces reified and stagnant positions in many quarters, not just within the DI, within the movement generally. These tendencies are of course not confined to Italy, it is easy to witness moments of stagnation within a movement, it is the point at which they turn inwards rather than outwards, close spaces rather than open them.
Days End
The day ended eventually when the police got bored of the games and thought it was a time enough to clear the area. A general bit of gassing pushed everyone out fairly quickly, it didn’t make much sense to do much more than strew the street with a few random objects to slow down the police advance. As a police car and small van, presumably carrying delegates, raced up the road and through the crowd it was pelted with rocks smashing a couple of the windows of the van. This was the last of the confrontation I saw.
Perhaps up to 300 000 people mobilised all up for the demonstrations, mostly the 200 – 250 000 in the centre of Rome far from the activities described here. Whilst perhaps these notes have been overly negative the Italian movement is far from uninspiring. What I have observed is certainly not the end, just a different chapter and hopefully not a closed book.
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11.10.2003 10:28
I hope more of this kind of writing can make it onto the site as I think this is the kind of reflection that we need in order to move forward.
geek