France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie (OCL) - Touch the bottom --- No TAV: a history of collective subjectivation (pt) ~ CookingFood.Org

Interview with a member of the Popular Struggle Bussoleno ---- "In the Val di Susa, there
was something much deeper: the problem is not to agree political activists (who, on the
contrary, have always faced and continue to do so) but to identify the substantive
conditions that led men and women without any history or political-ideological militant
belonging to activate the fight, by involving, devoting most of their energy and of their
time to the movement. This is the real political significance of the movement NoTav: a
process of subjectivation that, at different levels, involved a whole territory." ----
Following this meeting, we publish a text which returns to the ongoing repression,
detention of activists NoTav 4 on extremely heavy loads of "terrorism", and attempts to
understand the underlying causes, mechanisms and political issues.

MARIANNA SICA (Commonware), 25 February 2014

The documentary "Fermarci ? impossibile" ["We can not stop"] traces the last three years
of the struggle Notav since the first surveys Geognostic the winter of 2010 to the recent
initiatives of the summer of 2013. But Val Susa resists and fights for over twenty years,
why this desire to focus on the last three years of struggle? What do they represent for
Notav movement and what elements of change have occurred, both in terms of internal
transformation and movement in the attitude of the opponent?

Over the past three years, we have identified a single mode cycle of mobilization and
initiative Notav movement, characterized by the reappearance on the territory of the
offensive concrete, physical, even military camp opposite. After the victory of 2005 (when
the movement has succeeded in preventing the early work Venaus) the conflict has played in
terms strictly "political", as media coverage and consensus by both parties. These were
four important years in which the movement has made great strides in defining its
independence from the more moderate and institutional representation, defining itself as a
political issue and made recognizable by its unity of purpose, capable of make their own
choices, even against the institutional front.

But since January 2010, the confrontation between the two options is now live, the balance
of forces on the ground, without mediation. This does not mean that the battle will not
play in terms of consensus, connection with other battles and expansion of the battlefield
(unlike, perhaps more than ever), but what has changed, c ' is the type of relationship
with the opponent. Any possibility of convincing Valsusins benefits of this project would
radically change their territory and their life is exhausted. The State imposes project by
force, with all the ensuing consequences.

As has always been the Notav movement, this translates into the opposition and the
irreducibility of radical positions behaviors and readiness to fight.

Continuity and rooting the Notav movement has organize the coexistence and balance between
the different practices and expressions of the struggle, listening skills, sharing and
collective construction of a struggle that despite its high territoriality has spread with
such intensity that the identification Notav today is a strong and common element. These
are some of the features of the documentary movement sends us, but it seems that the
process of collective political subjectivation that the fight has Notav initiate, by
hybridizing the differences that make it up, but not eliminate, may be one of its special
features of major importance, is that correct? And if so, how this process has he been
possible, in which elements tripped and through what stages?

I think the ability of the movement was far to coexist differences as pronounced and
seemingly irreconcilable is certainly one of the most remarkable and innovative features.
Heterogeneous compositions have learned to coexist and build together the answers whenever
necessary obstacles. However, I want to clarify a few things. This feature is often
misunderstood and is reduced to the ability to find a common denominator between different
subjectivities already politicized or experience / past affiliations. As if the scope of
the Notav experience was limited to the activity of a militant Intergroup. In the Val di
Susa, there was something much deeper: the problem is not to agree political activists
(who, on the contrary, have always faced and continue to do so), but identify the
substantive conditions that led men and women without any history or political-ideological
militant belonging to activate the fight, by involving, devoting most of their energy and
their time to the movement. This is the real political significance of the movement NoTav:
a process of subjectivation that, at different levels, involved a whole territory.

As comrades Committee Popular Struggle (in all respects, the most explicitly political
committee of the valley), we have always preferred these processes (where one wants to
find a paradox and contradiction, but for us it is at this level that plays the meaning of
being militants today). This certainly does not mean that we do not sometimes make
mistakes ... The question, however, has always been put to us as the search for a virtuous
political practice, which broadens participation involves more people, is so that those
who speak and intervene are the expression of the average composition of the territory.
From our point of view, the problem has always been to the right direction, in the
direction of the trend to grasp, to make choices, to undertake concrete actions.

However, the movement not only expresses the resistance, it is not limited to defend
against existing current devastation of land and life, but wants and heralds a radical
transformation of the present and the future. These traits, which show the connection of
the Notav struggle with the most general level, as if they are triggered and how do they
eat in the movement? What are they and do they develop in the current scenario of the crisis?

Here we return to the considerations already developed in the previous question. These
aspects that you place the marked Notav movement in the most advanced in recent years
global movements. It is perhaps no coincidence that this movement has accompanied - by
acting on it from the inside - the crisis of representation, affirmation of the Internet
as a preferred means of communication and cons-instrument self-organization, the
affirmation of the ecological-energy issue as a political issue any short , the critique
of formal democracy as a separate process and enemy.

It is important to stress that these features are not acquired once and for all, but
rather represent the strengths, but also partial conquests embryos alternatives future
social relationships that are experienced here and now. In the specific dimension of the
current situation, with reference to the crisis that has arisen in recent years (which, as
we know, actually continues past few decades), the movement has been able to produce its
own coherent discourse and easily understandable, summarized in the slogan "1 cm = TAV all
hospital beds", "1 km = all schools set safety standards", etc.. to the global comparisons
where we try to imagine what we could do with all that money: instead of TAV, one could
then solve the problem of social housing, or articulate a serious possibility of an income
guaranteed minimum Forever * s.
latter aspect is not the most significant. Perhaps an accomplice of the convergence of
social demands with the phenomenon Five Star, the slogan of "income for all" has made its
way and has become very easy these past two years ... which is not evident in a period
marked by a strong identity left Labour and production-but that may be because of the
devastation suffered by land area, was highlighted the reality of work that there is not
and is perhaps unnecessary;. then arises the question of conversion, that is to say, to
imagine another model of development more sustainable
While this does not necessarily defines something final and absolute consistency; demand
guaranteed income coexists with more work, the decay with more subversive claims
Catholicism with the communist utopia.
In this sense, the Notav movement does not represent a unitary body ( Unit politically
defined and does not define a homogeneity of values and programs), but a patchwork of
singularities and collective subjectivity that build common control practices. It would be
vain to try to do all coincide to express the synthesis of the mode of being of Notav
movement (when "everything comes back" we come face to abstractions, the struggles of
today are wrong the eye and contradictory): the only synthesis which is expressed
politically in the rejection of the imposition of that comes from above and in response
sees consolidate opposition territory and a base which social, opposing prefigures other
forms of life and different perspectives of transformation.

Through several websites, using social networks, but also by comparing with various forms
of narrative and expression - I think some books published and the documentary itself -
the Notav movement has, over the recent years, and tell tell, bring out the truths,
passions, control practices Notav opposed to the narrative produced by the mainstream
media. The movement has devoted much attention to the construction of a "chronicle within
the movement," a story-cons, why? What is the relationship that Notav movement has built
over the years with the Net? And in addition to this narrative, what was circulated and
what has enabled this movement?

Very banal, I would say it is the need that has emerged gradually because the official
information, which is consistent with the political powers institutional and commercial
(mainstream media) has long refused to report the views of valsusine population. Or rather
it was a real erasure, even in the early 2000s, when the movement was already taking to
the streets with thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of people, the regional newscast
did not even make reference to these events. We like to say that NoTav movement became
known by becoming a public problem. Then came the moment - brief and recurring from time
to time - where the movement was cuddled in his "colorful" and peaceful aspects. For the
rest, the media coverage was, and still is (more than ever), the criminalization when it
is not outright falsification.

From these deficiencies arose the need for a speech and narrative. We do this with
notav.info. First, there was already notav.it (now notav.eu), centered mainly on the
dissemination of technical and scientific material in support of the reasons the movement,
while we focus mainly mobilizing the-participatory dimension and chronicles the struggle.
Today, there are dozens of sites that inform / valley (Tg-Maddalena, Ambiente-Valsusa
lavallecheresiste.info, notavtorino.it, spintadalbass.org, to mention only the most active).

The function Radio Blackout managed to acquire was also an important element in times of
high participation, including as a reference point for the updates in real time on the
movements of the opponent and those of our movement ( Now there is also a "Radio Notav"
program which broadcasts directly from Bussoleno).

The Internet has been almost a natural harbor for these communication formats, and from
there were sent our arguments and chronic. Clarification: it is from there and also the
gradual exit from the territory with tours and discussion meetings assembled the movement
brought across the country, especially in recent years. The Net has never been a
substitute for human communication, vis-?-vis, the fundamental aspect of a movement that
has grown in reviving and producing new social ties. In its own way, however, the use of
the Internet is also an organizational means: today we get to call the popular assemblies
in 48 hours just by doing since the reference sites and the mailing list for the
Coordination of committees (and word of mouth that is never absent). Being become a
benchmark for other movements and control situations has meant that web content produced
by the movement are listed on other portals and radio and it produces powerful effects
virality-communicative in mobilizing moments of the most intense fighting or when public
debate ignites.

But the other fundamental aspect, however, was the construction of a critical depth
knowledge partisan, located. The initial need for basic information on the route to the
questioning of the role of so-called "experts", the movement Notav learned that knowledge
is a battlefield, like communication. But the aspect most critical and politically
incisive was provided by the process of diffusion and socialization of technical and
scientific knowledge relating to the work. It was a real challenge to make this knowledge,
a popular knowledge embedded in motion. In this sense, the Notav movement has come to deal
with strategic issues already raised by the social and class movements of the 1960s and
70s: the critique of science, medical knowledge, "development". In the current phase, the
embryonic criticism of law made his way, because of the political role (augmentative and
strengthening law enforcement) that leads the Judiciary against the motion.

As we said at the outset, Notav movement by force, continuity and rooting it expresses, by
its ability to spread and reproduce, shook all the different components that make up the
opponent - lobby , the party system, media ... - and the criminalization and repressive
machine tries by all means to weaken a fight that frightens them. Convictions, arrests,
restrictions, penalties compensation to thousands of dollars, and real, and very clear,
legal testing of a repressive model. As the movement Notav he answers this fury? As the
movement does it face in the field of repression? Has represented about national day of
action on Saturday, February 22?

We must not hide the fact that the movement is now facing a delicate and difficult time.
The intensification of repression, including arrests and very generous and creative use of
social controls ( via di fogli [ban on driving in an area], preventive security measures,
summoned by the Tribunal and minor threats of "social affidamento" ["social guardianship,"
sentences tested in social services], etc.). certainly mark a new level of confrontation
imposed by the adversary. The criminalization of the movement proceeds together on
criminal law and that of the media portrayal of movement (or a portion thereof) as "the
hands of a minority of extremists" on a scent of "terrorism ". However, such threats still
not produce effects: despite all the difficulties, the movement continues to assume the
levels of conflict that product and claims publicly. Even today, after Saturday's
demonstration, operators of RAI and Mediaset are forced to admit that no one takes his
distance from sabotage and that the entire movement demands release of Chiara, Claudio,
Nicol? and Mattia [1].

More worrying is the use of monetization tools of repression, with the penalty of having
to pay economic damage caused by blocking actions, penalties for activists individually
according to the logic of individual responsibility. A dirty model that will make school
... Even here, however, the response was overwhelming, and in three weeks, they collected
nearly 300,000 euros to support Alberto Perino and two representatives (affected following
a very precise optical where the state seeks to strike figures are the link between the
size of the more militant of the "hard core" of the movement and the more institutional,
as a measure of collective discipline and widespread threat). [2]

I think it is necessary for the movement today to persevere and withstand concentric
attacks it undergoes. Of course, weighs just overall isolation is difficult to reproduce
the dynamics of the virtuous and able to generalize situations similar control in other
parts of the country struggle. Even here, however, things begin to change. Recent law
enforcement operations against the companions of the movement of the struggle for housing
in Rome and against the Precari Bros Naples testify in this sense also a problem that the
central government meeting in conflict management in accordance with the arrangements
already lapped the governance ... which started to jump! A sign that the emergence of
struggles from below that also asserts the legitimacy massified unlawful appropriation and
forms are scary.

In this sense, all the events and actions that took place on Saturday were very important
because they have outlined a practical and effective reference between local struggles and
social struggles on welfare. In some cities, thousands of people shouted aloud that rebel
is right, that the practice of sabotage is legitimate, that the criminalization becomes a
collective responsibility and that the fight against the TAV is only the tip of the more
advanced a more general opposition to the model social hyper-liberal who is in the process
of restructuring in the crisis, against us. We're still in the first steps and the numbers
are still too low to meet the challenges we face, but the road is drawn and Notav movement
will continue to be an integral part of the resistance and against attacks to come. As we
always say: Sara lasted [it'll be trouble] ... but also for them!

[Translation: XYZ / OCLibertaire]
____

Notes dictionaries:

[1] arrested December 9, 2013, charged with the crime of "terrorism" for having
participated in collective action on the site Chiomonte (Susa Valley) on the night of 13
to 14 May 2013, during which a vehicle has was burned. Among the charges, it is one that
speaks of an action that "caused serious harm to Italy and the European Union. "
[2] Condemned, January 15, 2014, jointly with the Mayor of San Didero, Loredana Bellone
and his deputy, Giorgio Vair to pay EUR 192,000 in damages to the company Lyon-Turin Rail
for the occupation in January 2010, golf autoport Susa, where geological surveys should
take place.

"Our democratic decisions you do not like?
Then you are a terrorist "

Informa-azione, February 23, 2013

When the enemy speaks clearly.
Brief note on recent arrests NoTAV

It was in the air this repressive operation on 9 December that led to jail four people
(three men and one woman), accused of involvement - on the night of May 13 to 14, 2013 -
an action against the construction of high-speed train (TAV) to Chiomonte, Val Susa.
course, nobody knew who would be affected, nor under what charges. But the refrain,
repeated in chorus obsessively for months by all the Italian media and the most prominent
advantage of the transverse pro-TAV representatives, left no doubt about what would happen.

The announcement by the Attorney General of Turin, Caselli [1], he anticipated the date of
his retirement a few months has not escaped the attention more, because it was not
auspicious: it is difficult to imagine that such a person leave the scene in silence.
After testing a few field during the summer without investigations and raids against
militants NoTAV on various charges under s. 280 ("bomb for terrorist purposes"), the
inevitable tandem prosecutors Turin Padalino-Rinaudo retried without some months later,
with the arrests of Chiara, Claudio, Mattia and Niccolo, in a last greeting to their
respectful sponsor . Caselli, and hoping to climb a few more steps in the race to succeed
Other expenses: "terrorist act with the use of devices capable of causing death or
explosive degradation by fire, violence against public officials, possession and transport
of weapons of war " .

These leaders accusations prevent any possibility of obtaining legal control measures
(alternatives to prison. House arrest, obligation or prohibition to be in a defined
territory, etc.) and also implies a very long detention before trial, threatening to be
transformed into sentences long sentences exceeding 20 years in prison if the charges
remain unchanged until the trial.

To be more precise, the four incarcerated prisoners are accused, among other things, to
have a group and with others "being identified" , an attempt on the life and physical
integrity of persons entrusted with the construction of the tunnel exploration and
attendants to site supervision and public order to "compel a government or an
international organization to do or abstain from doing any act" (in this case , financing
and implementation of high-speed railway line Lyon-Turin), "causing serious damage to
Italy and the European Union" (Article 270 of the Criminal Code).
A simple observation to note is that during this action against the work of TAV, no
person, worker, police or military, has reported a scratch or a single medical report. In
exchange, it is worth going into the details of Article 270.

Contained in judicial reform called "security package Pisanu" (July 2005), this article
should serve to greatly expand the definition of "terrorist behavior" taking advantage of
the emotional wave caused by the massacre in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. These new
rules, apparently designed to be applied in situations such as the Madrid bombings (which
forced Zapatero's government to withdraw its troops from Iraq) are characterized as having
been written in a deliberately vague manner.
Activists and lawyers were aware that the various situations of struggle bore the brunt of
such a reform. The appearance of section 270 in a direction against the NoTAV is not a
kind of judicial anomaly, but the application of a device designed from the beginning
against social conflicts .

It is not a coincidence that this map was shot for the first time precisely in defense of
the work of TAV to Chiomonte where already thought grilling Israeli barbed wire, soldiers
and tanks returned from Afghanistan, rendering . increasingly blurred the boundary between
internal and external war war
that night, were burned an electric generator, a power supply connected to a ventilation
turbine housing, electrical cables and pipes of the turbine - materials used for the
implementation of the exploration tunnel and that the damage actually slow the progress.

It was an act anything but indiscriminate , it was a gesture that says directly its own
purpose; action copy sabotage, a stick placed in the way of construction machinery to
hinder their operation.

It was a very good action included, among others, by the No TAV movement, as evidenced by
statements and press releases in the days following the action. For the first time in
thirty years in Italy, a mass movement claimed the validity of sabotage as a practical
struggle. In the true story, very different from the one written by justice, the practice
of sabotage was publicly assumed by the movement because the constant forms and
unequivocally taken by the overwhelming rejection of this major project has been
consistently and unequivocally ignored. Proof is that the site of an exploration tunnel
became a "site of national strategic interest", including the definition given by the
prosecution case prosecutors Rinaudo-Padalino does not come from government legislation
but Rather, a journal of the Staff of Defense.

All this has created problems in the pro-TAV party, view the image acquired by the
struggle in Val Susa authority. Elsewhere too - take for example the fight No MUOS
[against the installation of U.S. military antennas in Sicily] - the word sabotage is
topical again, creating even more problems to the "mother of all issues" (c that is to
say, the Italian democracy) as expressed Ligresti Mrs Cancellieri, in charge of the
Department of Justice.

It is in this context that we must read the instruction file. After the arrests of 9
December, many have pointed out that the accusations of terrorism, again in chorus by all
the press, sought once again to divide the movement. After the "we are all black bloc" ,
shouted by thousands of people on July 3, the new attempt to isolate the four imprisoned
by dividing the movement between good and evil, between the peaceful inhabitants of the
valley and extremists from outside, has failed miserably. [2]

Now, some people may still have doubts and even the investigators have no illusions. With
these accusations of terrorism, the objective pursued by the authorities seems to be quite
different.

In the record of the criminal investigation, investigators, while insisting on a purely
legal standpoint, support is clearly a political thesis. Based on a brief history of legal
acts and international summits which led to the installation site Chiomonte in the valley
of Susa, judges defend the thesis that it is a democratic process.

The action against the site - connected to the long list of opposition practices,
including the voluminous trial record-exhaustive lists has been defined as "terrorist,"
not for its specific characteristics of both, but for the reason to oppose the
"democratic" nature of intergovernmental decision. Follow this logic. All decisions
imposed by the state have a legal envelope, which means they are formally based on the
Law. Anything that challenges a state project can then be accused of "terrorism". All that
remains is more than platonic dissent.

Give a specific character to its own "No", which is basically the essential characteristic
of No TAV movement becomes undemocratic. Benito Mussolini said, "Nothing outside the
State, nothing against the State" . Totalitarianism today speak a different language: "Our
democratic decisions you do not like? You are a terrorist. "

Democracy is a reinforced door against any form of dissent (except, granted, complaint) if
dissent does not stop, the door is then reinforced with barbed son and military iron if
Dissent becomes sabotage then it reveals the "terrorist purpose" of the fight NoTAV.
Somehow, the two prosecutors in Turin explicitly say what hitherto was implicit: the
decisions of a democratic state are indisputable.

Every struggle, even in a labor dispute, wants to push the opponent to "do or abstain from
doing any act" (as stated in Article 270 sexies). The well-appointed social pact or
dialectic between the social partners was based on this that what is illegal today may
tomorrow become a law. It was the era that began in the late war, during which it has been
attempted to integrate the peasants and workers in the Great Compromesso : if you give me
the strength to work, I will concede rights. Well, this story is over. This is democracy.
Outside of it or against it, it's evil, terrorism. Say that it can refer to any movement
control is commonplace. What is less trivial is to draw the necessary conclusions. At
various times, the ruling class frontal attack enemies on its strengths, not the weakest.
The use of the category of terrorism against the TAV No movement - for what it expresses
and what it symbolizes - is, in this sense, a warning to all .
If we follow through the logic and Rinaudo Padalino, the "terrorist" nature of the
struggle against the TAV is not in a so-called "quantum leap", but in its very beginnings:
in this "no", whose 20 years of experience, knowledge, and confrontations actions that are
coherent development .

Not having resigned, even in the face batons, tear gas, bulldozers, the "Lince" [3], the
arrests, the media terrorism, this is the crime that contains all others. In this sense,
human companions arrested on suspicion of "terrorism" is not only a duty of solidarity,
but the claim of stubborn struggle and its grounds.
Grasp the challenges of this repressive operation and restart the resistors in Valley, as
elsewhere, is the business of each and everyone.

February 23, 2014

____

Notes dictionaries:

[1] Very famous Italian prosecutor, active against the mafia and revolutionaries since the
1970s, and considered it to be a "national hero." Retired December 28, 2013 after 46 years
of service (!).
[2] On July 3, 2011, thousands of people demonstrated against the deportation camp
Maddalena, resulting in several hours of clashes and demonstrate a clear intention to
resume expelled place. Are followed to arrest where the state and the media tried to
divide the movement. Slogan was shouted, and then taken by the whole movement fighting:
"siamo tutti black bloc" .
[3] "Lynx" light armored army.

Source: here

Translation: XYZ / OCLibertaire