from South Italy
János - 29.09.2010 15:14
something to think about...
Dear comrades in beautiful Holland,
I know these are hard days and you probably are very busy with the kraakverbod...
I lived two years in Amsterdam and had the fortune to enjoy your beautiful squats a lot of times, with the parties, the actions and all that. It's really scary that they want to put an end to it all, but I hope that whatever they say, squatting will stay.
If you feel like the end of the world is coming, and what's the point in trying to do something in such a society, let me tell you something about what's going on down here, in South Italy: as you might know, the management of waste in and around Naples is run by the camorra (the local mafia, the ones from the movie Gomorra), and as you also might know, in this country we can't really tell the difference between the mafia and the state, so entire regions are getting poisoned with all sorts of toxic waste while some gangsters make millions and send the police to beat up anyone who says a word against it.
These days, the inhabitants of Boscoreale (little village near Naples, in the middle of National Park on the Vesuvio mountain) have decided that enough is enough, and every night they try to stop the trucks that bring the rubbish to the nearby dumping ground (there's three of them, within one km). They spent the whole summer locked inside their homes because of the stench, they no longer feel that it's safe to eat what the land produces, and someone today even found something radioactive in one of the trucks. Every night, they gather on the street and every night they are savagely charged by the riot police, who clears them out to let the trucks pass. To add insult to injury, the government is saying that the camorra is behind the riots (newspapers talk about mysterious "anarchists with links to organized crime"), and very soon they'll start seriously arresting people as they have done before.
This is what capitalists can do, if given the chance. No european law or environmental regulation will save this people, no politician will change anything and no justice system will punish those who are poisoning an entire region behind the protection of the shields of the riot police and the guns of the camorra. Nobody will solve the "rubbish emergency", as it is an emergency that cannot be solved within the current system of things. Recycling is the only real solution, and autonomy the only realistic way to achieve it.
After the civil war we had in the '70s and '80s, which we lost badly, Italians went back home and turned the TV on - for twenty years. Our movement is nearly dead, and sometimes we can be really pathetic. We don't talk to each other, we don't wake up before 12 and we're always on the defensive, making endless and pointless lists of all the crimes and gaffes of Berlusconi. And the consequences of all that is that at some point you find yourself getting beaten up by the police every night about, well, about rubbish. It's a sorry state we're in, and if you don't want to find yourself in a similar state some day, fight now, because tomorrow's too late.
To those who might say that squats are not the most important thing in the world after all: today they come for your squats, tomorrow they'll come for your liberty, then for the land and one day you'll be defending the very air you breath. Personally, I miss the feeling I had the first time I went to ADM: to know that if we at least try to gain some real autonomy, life can be really different. That was what I got out some squats in Holland, and that I hope to experience one day here in Italy too. In the meantime, it's all about the rubbish. And I hope that by the time I'm back in Amsterdam there will still be some squats there...
no retreat, no surrender!
In solidarity,
-János
 Website: http://www.postphotography.eu
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