A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #34-25 - The tragic epic unfolds. Carrara - Politeama Theater and property speculation (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Carrara's Politeama Theater represents the city in many aspects, 
intertwining its vices and virtues, its positive political and artistic 
impulses, but also sharing aspects of unscrupulous activity in the 
eternal struggle between public and private interests, between 
collective and personal. It embodied the desire for urban growth of a 
city that was expanding and that, beyond its wineries and cellars, was 
believed to need a larger theater, where the little idleness that work 
afforded could be better spent. Or perhaps more realistically, there 
were resources to invest and deals to be made. However, it also 
immediately witnessed entrepreneurial savvy, which, during its late 
19th-century construction, committed an illegal building by adding two 
side wings for residential use.

The theater hosted the Congress that sanctioned the birth of the Italian 
Anarchist Federation. Since the postwar period, the Politeama Verdi 
Theatre's foyer has become the headquarters of the Germinal, a space 
assigned for merit during the Resistance, directly by the C.N.L. in the 
aftermath of the Liberation. This has thus linked the city to anarchy as 
the source of its freedom, further shaping its identity and at the same 
time testifying to the gratitude and moral debt the town has owed to the 
anarchist movement.

The significance of the presence of anarchist thought in Carrara can be 
seen in the concreteness of significant historical events, such as the 
reduction of working hours in the quarry to six and a half hours and the 
fundamental anti-fascist action. In the present, it is a political 
intervention founded on action and the defense of values such as 
internationalism and solidarity. In the current reclamation and defense 
of these spaces, we once again find the profound bond that naturally 
unites anarchists in Carrara, because in the defense of the Germinal and 
the Archive, we see the defense of something collective, something that 
has literally been stolen from the citizens for private and business 
interests. Thus, alongside the anarchist ideals that pervaded that 
building, and the comrades who frequented it, there also coexisted with 
speculation, driven by private interests, for the homegrown "grab and 
run" of businessmen. The businessmen who attempted to evict the 
anarchists from their premises, inconvenient witnesses to their 
unauthorized construction, under the pretext of renovation, deprived the 
theater of maneuvering space and then of emergency exits. Their 
continued abuses overloaded the Politeama's structure to the point of 
undermining its supporting columns. From that moment on, given the 
unusable condition of the structure, the Carrara anarchist movement was 
forced to abandon the historic premises, but since then nothing has 
changed, if not for the worse. Since the collapse of the foyer column in 
2008, further damage has occurred, without any attempt to repair it, nor 
has anyone been identified as a culprit. Now, with heavy rains and the 
likely compromised stability of the theater, another column has been 
damaged, necessitating a further evacuation of part of the building. Six 
families have been displaced, and a road through the city is blocked due 
to imminent danger. On November 27th, there will be a meeting between 
the parties involved: the municipality, tenants, the construction 
company, and the Politeama Committee. Naturally, we will be present as 
citizens and anarchists involved in this Carrara tragedy-without a 
stage, but likely also without a happy ending-of a city robbed of a 
theater and a community deprived of its memory, enslaving us to a 
dystopian contemporary world.

Germinal Group

https://umanitanova.org/va-in-scena-la-tragica-epopea-carrara-teatro-politeama-e-speculazioni-edilizie/
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