A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #7-26 - Women on the Barricades. Banned Notes - The Paris Commune 1 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

March 8, the International Day of Freedom for Bodies and Movements, 
falls very close on the calendar to the start of the Paris Commune, an 
event that briefly revolutionized political, professional, and social 
balances. Among the insurgents were many women, thus breaking further 
oppression and discrimination. The Paris Commune was born on March 18, 
1871, in the void left by the collapse of Napoleon III's imperial 
"bandwagon," disastrously defeated in the war with Bismarck's Prussia 
that had begun the previous year. Working-class and revolutionary Paris 
had to resist the Prussian siege and oppose the Versailles government's 
emergency National Defense (based in Versailles). To supplement the 
army, the people were armed in the National Guard, whose Central 
Committee organized the insurgents. The repression was bloody: from May 
21 to 28, 1871, over twenty thousand Communards were shot, including 
women and children, in the so-called "Bloody Week."

The Commune has been etched in numerous songs, including "The 
Internationale" and "Tell Me, Beautiful Young Man." Among these are some 
that focus on women's participation in the 1871 uprising-a sampling of 
three songs to sing while remembering.

1 ADRIANA MARTINO - LUISE MICHEL
2 FRANCA RAME - SONG OF THE WOMEN OF THE PARIS COMMUNE
3 SKULLD - LES PETROLEUSES

Adriana Martino - Luise Michel
Luise Michel is a symbolic figure of the Paris Commune and of anarchism 
in general. Dedicated to teaching from a young age, once in the French 
capital she became interested in Blanqui's socialist republican movement 
and met many of the figures who would later inspire the Commune. Luise, 
in the city besieged by Prussian and French troops, fights as a 
marksman, encourages resistance, helps the wounded, and seeks food for 
the children, "...an image of altruism / her "I" as such no longer 
exists / but only heroism lives within her." These are some lines from 
the song dedicated to her, performed by Adriana Martino, an opera singer 
who in the 1970s also devoted herself to folk music and recording 
political songs. This is the case with the double album "Cosa posso io 
dirti," published in Cetra's "Folk" series, a vast collection of social, 
popular, and militant songs, including one dedicated to the anarchist 
songs of the Canzoniere Internazionale. On the cover is a still-current 
cartoon by Scalarini, depicting two gentry arguing while looking at a 
map whose state borders are drawn on the skin of a flayed man, and the 
caption reads: "the skin of the proletariat."

With the defeat of the insurrection, Luise was arrested and sentenced to 
lifelong deportation to New Caledonia. During the crossing, she became 
an anarchist, meeting and interacting with other deportees. Even on the 
other side of the world, she befriended the Kanaks, the local population 
subjugated by the French. When they revolted, Luise Michel sided with 
them against the colonizers, while some deportees defended the French 
troops. "Her heart is so kind / it vibrates with solidarity / the only 
air that can be breathed / is the love of humanity." Thanks to an 
amnesty, she was able to return to France, where she continued her 
organizing and agitating activities within the anarchist movement. Her 
name has remained etched in the hearts of the people of New Caledonia 
and France.

Franca Rame - Song of the Women of the Paris Commune
Franca Rame performed "Song of the Women of the Paris Commune" in the 
show "Parliamo di donne," which premiered in 1976 and was broadcast by 
RAI the following year. The show was written with her husband Dario Fo, 
with whom she founded the Fo-Rame company in 1957. Their shows were 
highly successful, not only with audiences but also because their 
socially sarcastic content led to censorship and retaliation. Rather 
than traditional theater settings, they preferred to perform in 
community centers or Arci clubs, reaching audiences often unfamiliar 
with such circles. In the 1970s, they collaborated with the theater 
collective La Comune, with whom they co-wrote the Pinelli show "Morte 
accidentale di un anarchico" and other works with unmistakable titles, 
such as "Tutti uniti! Tutti insieme! Ma, scusa, non che che sono il 
padrone?" and "Basta con i fascisti" (Enough with the Fascists). The 
actor also founded the Red Aid organization in 1970, to support 
extra-parliamentary activists targeted by repression. Franca Rame was 
kidnapped, tortured, and raped in 1973 by five neo-fascists-it would be 
discovered much later-on the orders of high-ranking Carabinieri 
officials. Years later, she would transform everything she had endured 
into a monologue entitled "The Rape."

The piece dedicated to the women of the Communards is part of a show of 
various monologues linked by feminist themes. Parisian women played an 
important role from the outbreak of the war with Prussia: while many men 
were at the front, they created clubs and neighborhood committees. Aware 
that inequality and antagonism between the sexes were one of the 
foundations of power, the women of the Communards fought for equal pay, 
divorce, and secular education. The Paris Commune established 
unprecedented goals for women's emancipation, for example, the 
establishment of a vocational school for women, the creation of 
kindergartens, and the abolition of the distinction between legitimate 
and illegitimate children. During the 72 days of the Commune, the "Union 
of Women for the Defense of Paris" was founded, which helped organize 
the resistance to the insurrection, including internationalists from 
other European countries.

"Yes, I like you, / I like making love with you, / but I don't want to 
stay pregnant. / Oh no, that child wouldn't be for you, / but for the 
master I should make it. / So that I can use it, / sadden it with toil, 
/ as if sending it to war, only for him / I must nurse and raise it." 
Thus begins the short song introduced as "a little violent, it will 
surely make someone's hair stand on end, but someone will think about 
it...". The poem then repeats the first stanza almost identically, but 
this time the woman wants to raise the child for the master: "I want to 
nurse him with struggle and anger, / dress him only in red, / bathe him 
in wine and curses, / I want to lull him to sleep with bastard songs, / 
and then armed against the master / I want to send him". In the lyrics 
we can see a metaphor within the metaphor: the child is the son of an 
entire class of beggars and oppressed who are identified precisely by 
the only thing they have, their children. Thus, the Commune marks the 
proletariat's entrance onto the stage of history, a child who, as he 
matures, will learn to take and obtain what he needs in the decades to come.

Skulld - Les Petroleuses
The band Skulld fuses death metal with black metal and crust accents to 
invigorate lyrics inspired by esoteric mysticism, all garnished with a 
punk activism. Their English lyrics meander through feminist, pagan, and 
libertarian themes, drawing heavily from ancient female cults, seeking 
liberating and subversive content and tendencies in ancient 
pre-Christian civilizations. "Too metal for punk, too punk for metal!" 
they describe themselves. Their metal-esoteric-antipatriarchal imagery 
is doubly important, given that the metal scene is all too often 
right-wing, macho, and xenophobic. The 2024 song "The Portal Is Open" 
contains "Les Petroleuses," a song that moves away from occultism and 
neo-paganism to tell the story of the women of the Communards in Paris 
in 1871. Many of them fought in the trenches, some even wearing the 
uniform of the National Guard: "Blood on the streets / corpses in piles 
/ dressed up in black / for their sentence to death / mothers and wives 
/ daughters and maids / pour out this oil / fire it all!" The statute of 
the Women's Union provided, among other things, for the use of weapons 
in case of need, supplying fighters on the barricades and assisting the 
wounded, as well as purchasing oil. From this point on, many women of 
the Communards would be defined as petroleuses. More than a thousand 
women fought in that moment, evoked by Skulld's screaming lyrics: 
"They're ready to die / they're ready to fight / they're ready to 
destroy this all / a week of revolt / our hands are now strong / 
barricades built / fire it all!" During the "Bloody Week," several 
government offices and other institutions, as well as numerous homes, 
were destroyed by fire. Many believe that the figure of the petroleuses 
was often used by reactionaries to portray these events as being 
orchestrated by "mad" and wicked women. Petroleum had been widely used 
for months for all domestic purposes, replacing coal, and many fires 
were also caused by the Versailles cannonades.

En.Ri-ot

https://umanitanova.org/donne-sulle-barricate-note-bandite-la-comune-di-parigi-1/
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