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Statement from occupied Sapienza, Rome on student rebellions

MR | 27.10.2008 14:34 | Education | Social Struggles | World

A flavour of the ongoing student rebellions mobilising across Italy.

To the faculties in mobilization, to the undergraduate and Ph.D. students, and to all the precarious researchers

“We won’t pay for your crisis”, this is the slogan with which a few weeks ago we started our protest at the university of La Sapienza, Rome. A simple, yet at the same time immediate, slogan: the global crisis is the crisis of capitalism itself, of the financial and real estate speculation, of a system without rules or rights, of unscrupulous companies and managers. The burden of this crisis can’t fall on the educational system - from the school to the university - on the health system or generally on taxpayers. Our slogan has become famous, spreading by word of mouth, from town to town. From the students to the precarious workers, from the working to the research worlds, nobody wants to pay for the crisis, nobody wants to nationalize the losses, whereas for years the wealth has been distributed among few, very few people.

And it is exactly the contagion that has been produced in these weeks, the multiplication of the mobilizations in the schools, in the universities, and in the cities that should have stirred up a lot of fear. It is well known that a fearful dog bites; similarly, the reaction of President Berlusconi was immediate: “police against who occupy universities and schools”, “we will get rid of violence in our Country”. Only yesterday Berlusconi declared that he was willing to increase the financial support to the banks and that the State and the public expense would stand surety for the companies’ loans: in a few words, cutbacks to education, less founds for the students, cutbacks to the health system, but public money for the companies, for the banks and the private sector. We are wondering where is violence: is it a violence to occupy universities and schools or instead that of a government who imposes the Law 133 to cutback the founds for the education system refusing the parliamentary debate? Is it the dissent violent or is it violent who intends to put it down by the police? Who is violent: who mobilizes for the public status of university and schools or who wants to sell them for a few private profits? Violence is on Berlusconi government’s side, while in the occupied schools and universities there is the great joy and indignation of who fights for his own future, or who doesn’t accept to be put in the corner or forced to be silent. We don’t want stay in silence in the corner, of who wants to be free.
They tell us that we are only able to say no, that we don’t have any proposal. There is nothing more false: the occupations and the meetings of these days are really building up a new university, a university made of knowledge, as well as of sociality, of learning, but also of information, and consciousness. Studying is very important for us: and it is exactly for this reason that we think that the protests are necessary: we are occupying so that the public university can endure, to continue to study and do research. There are a lot of things that have to be changed both in the universities and in the schools, but one thing is certain: the change can’t pass through these cutbacks. Changing the university means increasing founds, to sustain the research, to qualify the educational processes and to guarantee mobility (from study to research, and from research to teaching). The cutbacks mean just one thing: transforming the public universities in private foundations, decreeing the end of the public university. 

The design and its tools are clear: Law 133 was approved in august, and against the protests of dozens of thousands of students they claim the police. This government wants to wreck democracy, through the fear, through the terror. But today, from La Sapienza in mobilization and from the occupied faculties, we want to say that we have no fear and we won’t step back. On the contrary, our intention is to make the government retreat: we won’t stop struggling before Law 133 and the Gelmini decree will be withdrawn! This time we will proceed till the very end, we don’t want lose, we don’t want submit to this arrogance. For this reason we ask all faculties of the Country to do the same: they want to repress the occupations, so that a thousand of faculties occupy!

Moreover, after the extraordinary success of the general strike on October 17th, we think that is the right time to give an unitary and coordinated answer in our cities. We suggest two national dates: a day of mobilization on Friday November 7th, with demonstrations spread all over the cities; a huge national demonstration of the educational world, from university to School, on November 14th in Rome,  the day the unions proclaimed the general strike of the university; a day to be built from the bottom and in which the central figures have to be the students, researchers and teachers in mobilization. At the same time we think that it is useful to cross, with our forms and claims, the general strike of the school proclaimed by the unions on Thursday October 30th.

What is happening in these days tells us of a powerful, extraordinary and rich mobilization. A new wave, an anomalous wave that doesn’t want stop and that rather wants to win. We have to increase this wave and the will to struggle. They want us idiots and resigned, but we are cleavers and in movement and our wave will go far!

From the occupied faculties of the La Sapienza, from the University in mobilization, Rome.  

www.uniriot.org

MR
- Homepage: http://www.uniriot.org/index.php

Additions

Updates, History and further links

27.10.2008 15:14

Good summary and lots of links here:
 http://libcom.org/news/we-wont-pay-the-crisis-26102008


Oct 23-24 008 :
Protests keep growing, with hundreds of demos and initiatives in all Italian cities and especially in Pisa, Venice, Padua, Naplei. In Rome: huge assembly at La Sapienza and spontaneous demo toward italian parliament. In Milano: official teaching blocked, public lectures hel in duomo square; assemblies and intramural protests at Statale, Politecnico, Bicocca and Brera. Berlusconi from china says "never said I'd send police in schools" and "the italian press don't understand my words". Minister of public education Gelmini says want to "open dialogue with students" and adds "there is an ongoing terroristic campaign against my reform". High schools are agitating mightily with most of the schools taken over by students and a myriad of street protests.

"We won't pay for your crisis":
"We won't pay for your crisis" : as in the rest of italy, in the
universities of Milano the mobilization is uncontrollable by power.
From Mediazione Culturale to Scienze Politiche, 'Accademia di Brera
and Università Bicocca, from Conservatorio to Politecnico to the State
University of Milano in central Festa del Perdono. Students are
mobilizing to bock the Gelmini Decree (Gelmini, arch-catholic minister
of education rechristened Gelminator by protesters), and to push for a
self-reform for a university of knowledge and research. Together with
postgrads, researchers, university employees and precasious faculty.
The brainworkers of immaterial labor are on the move. Everywhere the
blocks of lessons and the blockades of traffic by students are
multiplying, with spontaneous assemblies in each university,
department, with rectorates and classrooms occupied. An uncontrollable
movement that can win, and  transfprm a university based on deskilled
higher education and academic nepotism and related fiefdoms into a
university as public place of education and self-education linked to
the needs and cultures of the society to be. But where did all this
come from?

Stop Decreto Gelmini. Hands off schools and universities. We won't pay
for your crisis!

The Berlusconi Gov't passed the Law Decree n° 112 del 25 June 2008
titles "Urgent provisions for economic dev't, simplification,
competitiveness, stabilitazion of public finance and tax equalization"

This decree becomes provisional law during the summer holidays, on Aug
5 (Legge 133/2008)

In provincial Italy, the policy response to the mounting global crisis
as put forward by minister of finance Tremonti is drastic cuts to
social spending, starting from public school and universities.

The essential points of the gelmini-tremonti package: return to the
single teacher in elementary schools, segregated classes for "foreign"
kids, severe cuts in financial resources to education, the block of
hirings of teaching and technical personnel, from elementary schools
to universities and research, the reconversion of public universities
in private foundations...

In september schools reopen: all over italy a new movement makes its
frist stems in elementary schools, high schools, universities. The
first mots d'ordre are against the precarization of teachers, against
the single teacher that would enforce a single ideology, agains the
so-called differentiated classes that would violently discriminate
immigrant children with a truly racial provision aiming at
establishing apartheid in italy.

On Oct 3 the autonomous network of high school student collectives
take it to the streets in many cities of Italy.

On Oct 13, the minister Gelmini cancels her appearance at a symposium
in milano for fear of protests.

In october classes start in universities: a university student
movement emerges powerfully: "We won't pay your crisis!" It's a loud
and clear message that speaks of the here and now, of precarity,
economic crisis and the last gasps of neoliberalism. "Cut resources to
bankers and war missions, rather than to schools and universities! we
are the coming society! We are not the problem, we are the solution!"

Week by week the mov't grows: from elementary schools, teachers,
parents, kids are united in denouncing the decree; high school
collectives network their struggles; in universities researchers other
precarious faculty and professors start joining student assemblies and
discussing with student collectives.

"We have started so that we wouldn't stop" and "We shall never go
back" : university students are against the berlusconi cuts billed as
'reform' but do not want to defend public university fallen prey to
clientelist and nepotistic practices, ruled by barons over the
shoulders of precarious junior faculty. The growing movement does not
accept neither old labels nor old forms of representations, it demands
and practices autonomy and freedom from the classic forms of politics,
parties especially. The responsibilities of past centerleft
governments stand clear in weaking the public university system and so
does the inability of the current parliamentary opposition to oppose
mr b's decrees, which cuts funds to public schools while giving aid to
private schools. The dem party has also imitated berlusconi in calling
for draconian laws in the name of 'security'  fingerpointing dangerous
subjects such as gypsies, immigrants, street sellers, graffiti
writers.

On Oct 17, the national strike called by radical alternative unions
against the berlusconi government turns into the first No Gelmini Day.
In Rome 300,000 people take part in the strike demo. Rome students
take part in the union demo and then break off in the thousands and by
outflanking police manage to reach and block the ministry of
education. In Milano, unions are also on the streets. university and
highschool students decide to cross the whole city paralyzing traffic
as three demos merge: elementary schools, high school students, and
for the first time since the 'panther' movement of 1990, a strong
demonstration of university students from many agitating faculties and
academic insititutions. At the end of the demo, precarious teachers of
elementary schools and high school students put the milano education
department under siege, while university students experiment for the
first time with the practice of metropolitan blockades in the rest of
the city.

In the following week, the social situation escalates, as spontaneous
protests and initiatives spread to further cities large and small. On
Oct 21 in Milano, the General Estates of the University are held in
the aula magna of Milano State University. Just like in Sapienza in
Rome and in Palermo, the assembly is huge: 2000 people that decide at
the end of the assembly to give rise to a an unauthorized demo across
the streets of Milano. The demo marches fast and unpredictably, it
goes back and forth: the city goes tilt. Getting news that in bologna
and other cities university students have occupied railway stations,
the demo arrives at Cadorna train station. Riot cops prevent access to
the station and charge students with batons, who do not disperse and
block the car traffic all around by doing a determined sit-in. In
Florence, 40000 people of all ages from schools and universities
express solidarity to the student movement and fear for the
possibility of repression.

In the subsequent days, mobilizations further develop: in Milano,
Torino and other cities dozens of motions to faculty boards, class
blockades, assemblies, all-night events take place in freed
universities. The first experiments with alternative higher education
occur: academic lectures are held in central public squares before
hundreds of students and curious citizens, wihle students speak of
"free university and free knowledge".

On Oct 22 berlusconi accuses centri sociali (squatted social centers)
to be the maneuverers behind the social mobilizations and warns "I
will send the police against occupations of schools and universities."
THe movement is not intimidated: "We have no fear" is the rallying
cry. Some rectors swear "never police in a university", while some
professors ironize that a bit of university education might be well
needed by the italian police...

On Oct 23 berlusconi now in beijing denies having thought about
sending in the riot copes and accuse the italian press of
misinformation. In Rome, Sapienza students after another huge assemlby
the decided to march toward the parliamente in a demo merging three
streams of people, university students, high school students and the
acitivists of roman centri sociali who are protesting against the
eviction of Horus social center and the will to eradicate all social
spaces expressed by the neofascist new mayor Almeanno.

15000 people are spontaneously taking the streets in the heart of the
city. "Roma libera", "libertà, libertà", in the joy and thrill of the
moment a new cry emerges "un'altra Onda, un altra volta", "siamo i
giovani, siamo l'esercito del surf"  taken from a song of the roman
rapper "Er Piotta" [Another Wave, Once More] [we are the youth, we are
surf's army] The song is an antiauthoritarian antiwar jibe about being
able to go with the flow and repeat the wave of change; it expresses
the idea of strategic flexibility in the sense of being able to surf
the rough waves and be anywhere and everywhere, and especially to be
where they least expect us.

L'Onda, The Wave, the movement names itself: it's an anomalous wave, a
social anomaly. While the police protects parliament, the Wave puts
the city center under siege.

On Oct 24 berlusconi denounces the risk of extremist and violent
fringes in demonstrations. That night, 1000 students break onto the
red carpet of the rome film festival, saying "this movie is old". On
Oct 23 and 24 Ottobre piazza Duomo is filled by students and
professors that protest against the cuts and experience the urgency of
horizontal self-reform in higher education: "we shall never go back"

"Let's occupy the city to be concerned about ourselves":  the
university penetrates the city, the city penetrates the university,
street blocks and spontaneous protests each day block the city, the
outdoor lectures are crowded, everybody is suprised by the scale and
novely of the mobilization: government, police, academic barons, mass
media, it's an anomalous wave that submerges all.

The mobilization goes on. Fo Nov 29, berlusconi has scheduled the
final approval of the law. And the anomalous wave keeps growing.


MR
- Homepage: http://libcom.org/news/we-wont-pay-the-crisis-26102008


The Diaz trial verdict is on November 7th

27.10.2008 20:58

From the moment Berlusconi said the police would raid the student occupation of universities to break the strike, students have been emailing pictures of the diaz school raid between each other with the quotation ' the italian cops know how to raid italian schools!'.

The November 7th date for a national strike would suspend the Diaz verdict on this date. something many people have been waiting for. So the students union may have to think again.

Any the Diaz victims stand in solidarity with all italian students during this time

nessuno


Comments

Hide the following comment

Sapienza is the Biggest Masonic Lodge in Italy !!!

27.10.2008 18:32


I bet you a whole tin of Garibaldi's biscuits that :
The university of La Sapienza, Rome is the biggest Masonic Lodge in Italy.

Toscana Massonica
- Homepage: http://www.myspace.com/toscana_massonica


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