The 'Wave' of struggles against Government reforms of education (the Gelmini law) has caused a mass movement to begin in Italy. For one month, students, school students and education workers have been out on the streets. Numerous University faculties are occupied and demo and blockades are a daily occurrence. Now that the Law has been passed, everyone is waiting for a possible State repression to come down hard. Numerous days of action are up and coming.
SOME RECENT MOBILISATIONS IN THE LAST TWO DAYS
'Translated' in haste by poster! *-)
PADOVA:
More than 10,000 people took to the streets against the law 133/08.
The parade started at around 9.30 from Prato della Valle and was composed of university students, parents and teachers of primary schools, immigrants and Cobas ( A Union). After crossing the city centre, the procession arrived in Piazza Insurrection, too small to hold all the people who marched through the streets. From here, some 3,000 students move off and continue in spontaneous marches to make their voices heard. Police officers tried to block the path of students, but the parade continued thanks to the determination of the demonstrators. Traffic was blocked for nearly an hour and students gathered in assembly in Via Codalunga. The event ended today to 13.00, but the mobilizations will not stop, announce the students.
MILAN
Protest is a single uninterrupted river to Piazza Duomo, overflowing whilst people queue to get in the square. Then at the end of school students and universities continue beyond Dome with a new symbolic journey wild and uncontrollable through the city to close (for now) this day with a large spontaneous meeting in Piazza Affari, seat of the Stock Exchange: "Bankers, we will not pay for your crisis. " "They vote for the decree, we block the city". The protest promises to continue the day's uncontrollable movements towards the upcoming events of 3, 7 and 14 November. "The wave is abnormal, unpredictable and anti-racist".
VENICE
"If we stop the future, we block the city", this is the slogan of the student march today over the Liberty Bridge to Mestre, the mainland. From the park of San Giuliano they then returned to the Venice. "A first victory" - say the students - is the conquest of being able to pass on the Bridge of Freedom, that on October 11 last year had been denied." Already 3000 people had gathered by 10.00 am. When it began to cross the bridge there were over 10,000 people. School students and university researchers, doctoral students and faculty who have taken the right to demonstrate on the Bridge of Freedom. From microphones there have been various interventions that have taken the points of law 133 that are in dispute, was strongly re-affirmed the 'non-representability' of the student movement and the determination to recover the right to speak on its present and future.
The procession then obtained, thanks to the determination of the participants and the large numbers, to go to the park S.Giuliano, further blocking roads in Venice and on the mainland for several hours. At the Park, a meeting was held that reported the upcoming events for the student movement.
BOLOGNA
At Central Station, thousands enter the station. Finding the police in riot gear, the demonstrators show a presence and hold a communicative sit-in in the square outside and then resume the blockage of Viali heading towards Piazza Verdi, heart of the university.
Blocking the flow of production: 4,000 people go to the nerve center of mobility: the Path of Bologna, a 4-lane road, bordering the city center. and blocakde it. At Via Castiglione, police attack the head of the demo. After the first charge, the thousands of demonstrators want to get into the seat of Confindustria ( Italian employers' federation), shouting: We want to move because we are the future of this city. The unauthorized parade and spontaneous marches continue.
PHOTO GALLERY:
http://multimedia.quotidianonet.ilsole24ore.com/?media=10235&tipo=photo&id=206769&cat_principale_page=1&canale=0&canale_page=1
BARI
A long procession of nearly ten thousand people crossed the city of Bari. The parade started at 9.30 am from Piazza Umberto, led by children and teachers from primary schools, maching to the streets of the city center, to reach Piazza Prefecture where a large spontaneous march was assembling. 'Students, teachers and researchers, workers of the school and the university have interpreted the strike today as a moment of shared struggle and fight against a "reform", unjust made cuts and insults at school and research'.
GENOA
More than 30,000 people in the streets in Genoa. Three were the parades that are then fed into Piazza De Ferrari: The largest parade, that of university and school students left from Piazza Loading, the union departed from Brignole, Cobas and teachers from Piazza dell ' Annunziata.
Piazza de Ferrari by the huge procession was then moved to the University of Via Balbi and then arrive at the station Principe, where thousands have occupied the tracks. From here demo went to Via Gramsci and then blocked the flyover.
PARMA
Two concentrations, one in Piazza Garibaldi started at 9 am, and another, unauthorized, the 8.30 barrier in Bixio. The first is a massive presence of high school teachers, elementary teachers and parents. The procession of students passing through the streets of the neighborhood Oltretorrente have repeatedly blocked the roads in one of the most car dense parts of the city centre. Teachers and students of the Faculty of Parma had staged a funeral procession for the death of UP public. But this time, after the Senate approval of the decree Gelmini, the air we breathe is no longer funeral but is a struggle that will not stop and the only thing that can calm and the immediate withdrawal of the decree.
The demos all join together: teachers, students, staff, all together are directed again towards the Oltretorrente to return and shout their anger in the district's student area. Blockades for long time on the Bridge Middle, Via Bixio, and Via Maria Luigia.
After the procession arrives back in Piazza Garibaldi, an assembly was set up for the afternoon in the Faculty of Letters, a meeting open to the whole world to organize training for new and shared mobilizations in the coming days
PHOTO GALLERY:
http://www.gazzettadiparma.it/mediagallery/foto/2899/Corteo_contro_la_riforma_Gelmini_-_Le_vostre_foto.html
VICENZA
4000 people responded to the provincial event for the defense of public school students proposed by the Coordination Vicenza. It had 'been a great parade, lively, crowded, joyous and not and resigned'. Spontaneous parades by individual colleges have reached the station. There were not only students, but many professors and teachers of primary schools. It was a long time in Vicenza does not see a parade for the school so large and so diverse in composition. The procession passed through the city center to get to the administrator. Here is a delegation of students and teachers of various ISIT rose to deliver the various documents against the reform Gelmini, while in the street and more precisely in the middle of the roundabout at Borgo Scroffa took an open lesson to explain in detail what the law provides for 133, the law 137 and especially the Programmatic Plan of the Ministry.
TRENTO
High school students gathered, starting at 8, in support of anti-reform approved yesterday by the Senate. After a series of speeches to students and the crowd moves in a spontaneous march from Piazza Fair at the Faculty of Sociology, with students and academics together to discuss the next steps in public. In front of the entrance of the faculty were also achieved by a fifty teachers who had organized spontaneously with a presence in Piazza Duomo.
In the Occupied Sociology faculty, there continues to be intense days of public meetings and lectures alternatives, solidarity to Rome's students and a tough stance against neo-fascist infiltration within student 'wave'.
MARCHE
Today many demos in the cities in the Marches. "Do not cut our future", this is the slogan with which it is open the procession of more than 600 people who marched through the streets of the city throughout the morning. The march, called by the Collective student "Short Circuit", was attended not only of high school students, including teachers, school staff and parents. There was also the collective presence of other cities in the province. Students have now decided to express themselves, remaining in the territory, recovering the city and turning roads into spaces where all meetings have taken word for more than an hour traffic was blocked in a major city arteries.
While the students and all the protesters were sitting on the floor in the middle of the road there have been numerous interventions including those of teachers and principals. Banners against the reforms were hung along the way on the walls of schools. The event will continue in the afternoon with provincial student at an Assembly Social Center "TNT" to organize the upcoming mobilization and participation in the national demonstration in Rome on 14 November.
Parades also in Ancona, Fabriano and Pesaro. University of Ancona and Macerata is occupied.
ALLESANDRIA
From 8 am, had been spontaneous parades through the city. The first to reach the Centre, the students of Saluzzo, then the Fermi and Busy Nervi, the other high schools and kids from 'ITIS Volta yesterday along with students of Saluzzo who had occupied the train station. Then come Political Science and the occupied University MFN occupied, all in white shirts. A quarter to 10 the parade invades the city center. Many families that are added during the journey until at least 5000 people, students, teachers, researchers, parents for the largest student demonstration in memory for the city of Alexandria. The demo is noisy, colorful and very determined. Waiting under the Prefecture, the demo confirms to block the entire city if the government will not backtrack.
VERONA
5000 students, teachers, parents block for the entire morning the city.
-------
Here is a good and useful summary from the Italian Global Project website:
Italy - Hands off schools and universities. We won’t pay for your crisis!
Global Project Milano - Thursday October 23rd, 2008
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 block 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 transform 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 Gelmini’s Law. 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, while 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 parliament 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. For Nov 29, Berlusconi has scheduled the final approval of the law.
And the anomalous wave keeps growing.
-----------------
'Translated' in haste by poster! *-)
PADOVA:
More than 10,000 people took to the streets against the law 133/08.
The parade started at around 9.30 from Prato della Valle and was composed of university students, parents and teachers of primary schools, immigrants and Cobas ( A Union). After crossing the city centre, the procession arrived in Piazza Insurrection, too small to hold all the people who marched through the streets. From here, some 3,000 students move off and continue in spontaneous marches to make their voices heard. Police officers tried to block the path of students, but the parade continued thanks to the determination of the demonstrators. Traffic was blocked for nearly an hour and students gathered in assembly in Via Codalunga. The event ended today to 13.00, but the mobilizations will not stop, announce the students.
MILAN
Protest is a single uninterrupted river to Piazza Duomo, overflowing whilst people queue to get in the square. Then at the end of school students and universities continue beyond Dome with a new symbolic journey wild and uncontrollable through the city to close (for now) this day with a large spontaneous meeting in Piazza Affari, seat of the Stock Exchange: "Bankers, we will not pay for your crisis. " "They vote for the decree, we block the city". The protest promises to continue the day's uncontrollable movements towards the upcoming events of 3, 7 and 14 November. "The wave is abnormal, unpredictable and anti-racist".
VENICE
"If we stop the future, we block the city", this is the slogan of the student march today over the Liberty Bridge to Mestre, the mainland. From the park of San Giuliano they then returned to the Venice. "A first victory" - say the students - is the conquest of being able to pass on the Bridge of Freedom, that on October 11 last year had been denied." Already 3000 people had gathered by 10.00 am. When it began to cross the bridge there were over 10,000 people. School students and university researchers, doctoral students and faculty who have taken the right to demonstrate on the Bridge of Freedom. From microphones there have been various interventions that have taken the points of law 133 that are in dispute, was strongly re-affirmed the 'non-representability' of the student movement and the determination to recover the right to speak on its present and future.
The procession then obtained, thanks to the determination of the participants and the large numbers, to go to the park S.Giuliano, further blocking roads in Venice and on the mainland for several hours. At the Park, a meeting was held that reported the upcoming events for the student movement.
BOLOGNA
At Central Station, thousands enter the station. Finding the police in riot gear, the demonstrators show a presence and hold a communicative sit-in in the square outside and then resume the blockage of Viali heading towards Piazza Verdi, heart of the university.
Blocking the flow of production: 4,000 people go to the nerve center of mobility: the Path of Bologna, a 4-lane road, bordering the city center. and blocakde it. At Via Castiglione, police attack the head of the demo. After the first charge, the thousands of demonstrators want to get into the seat of Confindustria ( Italian employers' federation), shouting: We want to move because we are the future of this city. The unauthorized parade and spontaneous marches continue.
PHOTO GALLERY:
http://multimedia.quotidianonet.ilsole24ore.com/?media=10235&tipo=photo&id=206769&cat_principale_page=1&canale=0&canale_page=1 BARI
A long procession of nearly ten thousand people crossed the city of Bari. The parade started at 9.30 am from Piazza Umberto, led by children and teachers from primary schools, maching to the streets of the city center, to reach Piazza Prefecture where a large spontaneous march was assembling. 'Students, teachers and researchers, workers of the school and the university have interpreted the strike today as a moment of shared struggle and fight against a "reform", unjust made cuts and insults at school and research'.
GENOA
More than 30,000 people in the streets in Genoa. Three were the parades that are then fed into Piazza De Ferrari: The largest parade, that of university and school students left from Piazza Loading, the union departed from Brignole, Cobas and teachers from Piazza dell ' Annunziata.
Piazza de Ferrari by the huge procession was then moved to the University of Via Balbi and then arrive at the station Principe, where thousands have occupied the tracks. From here demo went to Via Gramsci and then blocked the flyover.
PARMA
Two concentrations, one in Piazza Garibaldi started at 9 am, and another, unauthorized, the 8.30 barrier in Bixio. The first is a massive presence of high school teachers, elementary teachers and parents. The procession of students passing through the streets of the neighborhood Oltretorrente have repeatedly blocked the roads in one of the most car dense parts of the city centre. Teachers and students of the Faculty of Parma had staged a funeral procession for the death of UP public. But this time, after the Senate approval of the decree Gelmini, the air we breathe is no longer funeral but is a struggle that will not stop and the only thing that can calm and the immediate withdrawal of the decree.
The demos all join together: teachers, students, staff, all together are directed again towards the Oltretorrente to return and shout their anger in the district's student area. Blockades for long time on the Bridge Middle, Via Bixio, and Via Maria Luigia.
After the procession arrives back in Piazza Garibaldi, an assembly was set up for the afternoon in the Faculty of Letters, a meeting open to the whole world to organize training for new and shared mobilizations in the coming days
PHOTO GALLERY:
http://www.gazzettadiparma.it/mediagallery/foto/2899/Corteo_contro_la_riforma_Gelmini_-_Le_vostre_foto.html VICENZA
4000 people responded to the provincial event for the defense of public school students proposed by the Coordination Vicenza. It had 'been a great parade, lively, crowded, joyous and not and resigned'. Spontaneous parades by individual colleges have reached the station. There were not only students, but many professors and teachers of primary schools. It was a long time in Vicenza does not see a parade for the school so large and so diverse in composition. The procession passed through the city center to get to the administrator. Here is a delegation of students and teachers of various ISIT rose to deliver the various documents against the reform Gelmini, while in the street and more precisely in the middle of the roundabout at Borgo Scroffa took an open lesson to explain in detail what the law provides for 133, the law 137 and especially the Programmatic Plan of the Ministry.
TRENTO
High school students gathered, starting at 8, in support of anti-reform approved yesterday by the Senate. After a series of speeches to students and the crowd moves in a spontaneous march from Piazza Fair at the Faculty of Sociology, with students and academics together to discuss the next steps in public. In front of the entrance of the faculty were also achieved by a fifty teachers who had organized spontaneously with a presence in Piazza Duomo.
In the Occupied Sociology faculty, there continues to be intense days of public meetings and lectures alternatives, solidarity to Rome's students and a tough stance against neo-fascist infiltration within student 'wave'.
MARCHE
Today many demos in the cities in the Marches. "Do not cut our future", this is the slogan with which it is open the procession of more than 600 people who marched through the streets of the city throughout the morning. The march, called by the Collective student "Short Circuit", was attended not only of high school students, including teachers, school staff and parents. There was also the collective presence of other cities in the province. Students have now decided to express themselves, remaining in the territory, recovering the city and turning roads into spaces where all meetings have taken word for more than an hour traffic was blocked in a major city arteries.
While the students and all the protesters were sitting on the floor in the middle of the road there have been numerous interventions including those of teachers and principals. Banners against the reforms were hung along the way on the walls of schools. The event will continue in the afternoon with provincial student at an Assembly Social Center "TNT" to organize the upcoming mobilization and participation in the national demonstration in Rome on 14 November.
Parades also in Ancona, Fabriano and Pesaro. University of Ancona and Macerata is occupied.
ALLESANDRIA
From 8 am, had been spontaneous parades through the city. The first to reach the Centre, the students of Saluzzo, then the Fermi and Busy Nervi, the other high schools and kids from 'ITIS Volta yesterday along with students of Saluzzo who had occupied the train station. Then come Political Science and the occupied University MFN occupied, all in white shirts. A quarter to 10 the parade invades the city center. Many families that are added during the journey until at least 5000 people, students, teachers, researchers, parents for the largest student demonstration in memory for the city of Alexandria. The demo is noisy, colorful and very determined. Waiting under the Prefecture, the demo confirms to block the entire city if the government will not backtrack.
VERONA
5000 students, teachers, parents block for the entire morning the city.
-------
Here is a good and useful summary from the Italian Global Project website:
Italy - Hands off schools and universities. We won’t pay for your crisis!
Global Project Milano - Thursday October 23rd, 2008
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 block 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 transform 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 Gelmini’s Law. 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, while 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 parliament 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. For Nov 29, Berlusconi has scheduled the final approval of the law.
And the anomalous wave keeps growing.
-----------------
Comments
Display the following comment