Note:
the original text can be found on the Italian language a-infos page ( http://www.ainfos.ca/it/ainfos00809.html
).
Some
of our reflections on the days in Genoa
from
El Paso
The
heated comments about the events report (above all, obviously coming from the
institutional press) the accusations from the heads of the organizations
present in Genoa that speak, almost unanimously, of provocateurs in combat with
the police (thoroughly filmed and photographed), or, in a minority of cases, of
hooligans let loose to agitate, who played games with the police giving them an
opportunity to attack the bulk of the peaceful demonstration.
The
first observation that one can make is that these accusations have been
methodically repeated for 25 years every time a street demonstration escapes
the control of its presumed political organizers. To hear that there are always hot heads, comrades that blunder,
people that ‘fall into provocations’ (fascists or police), or, in the most
scandalous cases, infiltrators.
This
is the only justification of those who try to manage and use the wills of the
protest of thousands of people in arguments that touch everyone, in direct and
indirect ways.
There
are thousands of motives for protesting: a meeting of powers, the most powerful
in the West, protected by thousands of men fully armed, the same men that in
the first instance, everyday, everywhere, apply the decisions of the powerful.
The
G8 is nothing. Nothing is decided
there. But it is a symbol. And symbolically there were those who wanted
to protest against them. In diverse
ways and terms.
And
at this point it is necessary to understand its terms. To contest democratically (in the accepted
meaning of the so called organizers and exponents of ‘civil society’, this
means without offending, without doing damage, without defending oneself) also
means to understand--just as those same powers have remarked through their
spokespeople--that these powers represent nations in which democracy reigns,
that they have been democratically elected, and that they therefore represent all
those that accept voting and accept the terms of democratic management, being
governed from this and from that ordering politics. It is a system that doesn’t leave gray areas: one accepts it or
not. In this sense, those who thought
of protesting democratically were practically demonstrating only the
disappointment of an institutional minority about the decisions of the
government that they themselves have legitimized by voting.
We understand: even if there were a million people, they would have been
democratically considered a minority.
The electorate has decided otherwise, they have voted for others, and
those elected democratically decide for everyone. Diverse millions of people have elected these powerful. The others continue to try. Scratch scratch maybe one time it’ll be your
turn to command.
What
is the use of a demonstration of a minority?
To let off steam, to show that we do not agree, to try to put pressure
on our governors to make more just decisions... maybe because we must do it. But when we are in the streets, even for the
second, the third, the hundredth time, after years of bearing limitations,
oppressions, injustices, repression, violence, that are imposed by decisions on
high, something else happens. It
happens that we remember the anger of when we suffer wrongs, how it is
impossible to manage one’s own life because in each of its aspects we are
limited and repressed by a system that has fabricated predefined platforms from
which is impossible to escape. We understand how it may not even be possible to
know who is responsible for that which befalls us.
Our
employers are not responsible--if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t eat; it’s not
those who make us pay taxes (now they take them directly out of the stipends,
that way it is less painful); it is not he who fines us, in the end he’s just
doing his job; it isn’t he who teaches us how to behave from the time we’re
children--we should have common customs--and afterwards if there are those who
don’t do these things, patience and endurance; it is not he who governs us, in
the end they merely act as the expression of the majority of us; it is not he
who beats and arrests us--someone has to do it--and then it is not with force
that the divisions that keep some ‘below’ are created....
In
this way, when in everyday life we understand that things don’t work, no one is
ever at fault, no one is responsible, they all have a justification, and it is
not possible to do anything, if you don’t beg, vote and ask for a few more
crumbs (for some more money...).
For
the great collective questions, there are not responsible ones: pollution,
hunger, disease, wars, we no longer find those who are responsible. And we are
left there to wring our hands, impotent.
There
is she who has come down to the street with these feelings long since
rationalized, who has felt them emerge during hours in the street. And so many have vented their anger, have
exploded, understanding how, in these demonstrations, we have nothing else to
do that doesn’t bring you to a mere picnic.
So many have destructively expressed their very anger and fury against a
system which, indeed, is a black block, a block that doesn’t leave space for
any other method, much less that of the self-determination of life. Every imprisoned being, eventually, rebels,
no matter how long and comfortable her cage may be.
Then
we can also say that the police would have charged people regardless, that they
have charged those who did nothing, that they didn’t expect anything else, that
they like to beat, that the atmosphere was in any case that of intimidation,
but the fact is there was no other sensible way to behave when faced with 8
powers that decide for everyone and that surround us with thousands of armed
men.
And
he who has seen the endemic violence of the institutional demonstration, of its
blocks, of walls, of divisions, even before direct violence, knows that the
responsibility is that of the State and its protectors, independent of
provocateurs. Their very existence is a
provocation, a menace.
When
we protest against those who govern the world, we cannot use measured
means. The system wants someone (or
some people) to govern everyone, and the individual can do nothing. And in these days thousands of individuals,
not only some anarchists (now that everything interests us except riding the
tiger), have expressed and have lived their own anger without mediations.
They
know--the organizers, the mediators, the institutional politicians--that no
one, neither us, nor them, nor anyone in the streets yesterday or in the
future, can govern protest, can restrain the fury of those who are constrained
every day to live under the aegis of the State, of laws, of justice. They--the so called pacifists, social
democrats, and reformists--cannot do anything but retrace the systems and
methods of those that they say they are contesting: hierarchical and specialist
organizations, delegation,
representation, control, censure, repression. Power against power. They
disappear. Or they resign themselves to
organize trips for bored alternative-antagonistic tourists, even to exotic and
far destinations, that don’t touch them closely in their daily lives.
Some
general and abstract critical notes: the danger of these demonstrations is that
even the most determined and sincere subside when it is only on these occasions
that one can express oneself, that is, only when there are mass situations,
when the satisfaction of agitating is shared by many, and when these actions
are disseminated by the media: the dangers therefore are the renunciation of
projectuality and self satisfaction.
On
the contrary, that which is materially extremely dangerous is the spreading of
film, video and photographic cameras everywhere, even in our own ranks. The instrument most useful by repression for
control is the identification and repression of individuals. It is necessary to
eliminate first of all amongst us, this practice, this stupid and useless habit
of filming and photographing.
Representation, the spectacle of reality cannot do other than deviate
our actions.
El
Paso, Sunday July 22, 2001
El
Paso Ocupato--Torino Italy
ne’centro
ne’sociale...ne’squat
elpaso@ecn.org
distro
contacts: fortpaso@ecn.org
tel
0039.11.317.41.07
Translated
by L.T.