A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #20-26 - Yesterday's memories for today's challenges. 25 years since the G8 in Genoa (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

There are events that mark a watershed in history, whether we're talking 
about History with a capital "H" or personal stories. For the generation 
that emerged from activism in the wake of '68, it was certainly the 
state-sanctioned massacre in Piazza Fontana; for many of my generation, 
it was the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. I certainly don't want to 
compare the two events, which had completely different gravity, 
contexts, and dynamics, but both marked the moment of "loss of 
innocence" for so many people. And that's why, even though twenty-five 
years have passed, the burning memory of those days remains vivid, as if 
it were yesterday. And so it's important to talk about them and reflect 
on them, even though the world has changed radically in the meantime, in 
many ways for the worse.

To talk about Genoa, we need to talk about the transnational movement 
that was called "Anti-Globalization," especially by the mainstream 
media. Although it had existed in an underground form for some time, it 
gained global resonance with the protests against the WTO (World Trade 
Organization) summit in Seattle at the end of November 1999, when tens 
of thousands of people took to the streets, intent on protesting and 
blocking the gathering of the world's powerful by any means possible. 
Amid the noise of smashed windows and barricades against the police, the 
gestures of those helping to alleviate the effects of tear gas and the 
irreverent parades of the clown army, a new, powerful, and multifaceted 
international movement emerged to challenge the world's masters. From 
that moment on, wherever a forum of international organizations (IMF, 
World Bank, OECD, NATO, etc.) was held, tens and sometimes hundreds of 
thousands of people demonstrated and besieged the physical venues of the 
summits.

Beyond its spread across every continent, the movement's other important 
characteristic was its ability to unite not so much ideas as diverse 
street practices. Indeed, in varying ways each time, for almost two 
years there was no such devastating division between "good" and 
"bad"-the bane of so many mobilizations-but a plurality of approaches 
that managed to coexist: from the clown army to the pacifist march, from 
the black bloc to the union strike. The institutions responded with 
increasing violence, until March 2001, when protests at the Global Forum 
in Naples ended with a police massacre in Piazza Plebiscito and the 
torture of those detained and taken to the Raniero barracks. Then, in 
June 2001, in Gothenburg, a police officer put three bullets in the back 
of a 19-year-old protester who, fortunately, survived. A clear 
foreshadowing of what would happen in July.

The G8 in Genoa was supposed to represent, in the minds of many, the 
high point of that movement, but instead it marked its end, along with 
the attack on the Twin Towers in September of the same year.
One of the causes was that the many souls who gathered in the Genoa 
Social Forum, the network that organized the counter-summit, effectively 
reproduced the old hegemonic and authoritarian logic of the political 
and trade union apparatuses, failing to embrace the new forms of 
agreement and shared practices typical of the anti-globalization 
movement in other countries.
Thus, state violence, deployed in all its ferocity, had an easy time 
dividing the movement, instilling doubt and suspicion. This was despite 
the fact that the "forces of law and order" had been clear since the 
morning of Friday, July 20: massacre everyone without hesitation. The 
murder of Carlo Giuliani, the savage beatings in the streets, the 
torture in Bolzaneto, and the massacre at the Diaz school were not 
"accidents," but the product of a long-planned plot. A practical lesson 
in real democracy, more effective than a thousand subversive speeches. 
Despite this, many souls on the pacifist and institutional left will 
continue to speak for years of democracy betrayed.

The "Anarchists against the G8," to which many of the Italian-speaking 
anarchists who traveled to Genoa belonged, chose to ignore the siege of 
the red zone where the heads of state were located, demonstrating 
instead in Sampierdarena, in proletarian Genoa, the site of the great 
workers' struggles.

We focused on a general strike, creating strike committees in various 
cities that led to territorial assemblies. We focused on radical 
objectives and social roots. In the issue of Umanità Nova that was 
published in Genoa, we wrote: "International demonstrations, like 
today's in Genoa, have been and will be important because they highlight 
the destructive, violent, and irreformable nature of various 
supranational organizations, but they cannot represent the focal point 
of a process that must necessarily develop elsewhere. The strength of 
this movement lies in its ability to combine radicalism and rootedness, 
to act and think locally and to act and think globally, and it must not 
wither away in mere protest against the powerful. Otherwise, it risks 
becoming a sort of counter-globalization tour operator, specializing in 
trips to exotic lands. A kind of Camel Trophy of subversion, complete 
with pre-programmed emotions. Or, worse, of acting as a movement's 
platform for a bloodless institutional left chasing positions and new 
faces. Politicians of every stripe, in need of legitimacy, took part in 
the Genoa Social Forum. (...)
This is a world that runs, running ever faster, and just as quickly 
grinds out experiences, paths. And even social movements that cannot 
escape the spectacle, the insane logic that, senselessly mimicking the 
rules imposed by marketing, rapidly consumes, suddenly rendering 
obsolete, even the capacity to criticize, transcend, and deny the 
established. It is a trap to be avoided, by displacing the adversary, 
multiplying one's own ability to clear new ground, autonomous zones, and 
free spaces. To overcome the numerous impasses in which it risks 
becoming stuck, the movement must be able to spread across the territory 
like dust, building conflictual relationships that feed on the capacity 
to intentionally construct other worlds, other relationships, other 
lives. Every day, everywhere. The urge to radical action that can draw 
nourishment from deep roots, from a vision capable of profoundly 
innervating the present, can be the sign of a revolutionary movement 
capable of building its own future in the here and now. As anarchists, 
we have begun, not without difficulty, to move in this direction, the 
only one capable of gathering the most fruitful demands of these 
movements. But it can and will be We must do more."

We believe those words are more relevant than ever. History has made it 
clear that only where large movements have emerged that have managed to 
combine a strong territorial presence with the method of mass direct 
action, not just among militant minorities, have governments and bosses 
become fearful.
The choice to strive for radicality and deep roots is therefore for us 
the main legacy of those July days, a challenge that is renewed every 
day in the struggles we promote and experience. A constant act of 
confrontational subtraction from the established, combined with the 
practice of self-management and daily struggle.

A comrade who was there

To read and download the Umanità Nova special released immediately after 
the G8:
umanitanova.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Le-tre-giornate-di-Genova.pdf

https://umanitanova.org/36486-2/
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