A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #470 - INTERVENTION Palermo shoots (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The writer was born and raised in Palermo, a city that's not easy to 
navigate, even for Palermitans themselves. In recent years, there has 
been a steady escalation of urban violence, which has consistently 
affected youth, from the Arab Zone to the latest shootings in the heart 
of the city's nightlife, with a trail of deaths that has reached the 
city of Monreale.
It's not my interest to cite specific figures, but rather to consider 
the urban context. From the postwar period until the early 1990s, 
Palermo was a true capital of Western Europe, with a mafia bourgeoisie, 
with its political, economic, and military branches, which powerfully 
influenced Sicily and Italy, with strong international influences.
The Banco di Sicilia and the Cassa Centrale di Risparmio, supported by a 
myriad of local banks, guaranteed a constant flow of credit for the 
development of mafia power. At that time, Palermo was an extremely 
wealthy city, and Palermitans ruled the world.
The Sicilian Mafia was embedded in the North Atlantic command system; 
it's no coincidence that the most important US-NATO military bases were 
built in territories governed by Cosa Nostra. We know how the Mafia war 
continues, the high-profile corpses, the white luparas, with those who 
attempted to rebel being killed, see Peppino Impastato, with young women 
who were killed like Rita Atria.
In our country, the deaths and massacres; in the North, Tangentopoli and 
the Salvo brothers' death squads. A change of pace in political 
direction that required a lot of blood.
Blood that in the post-war period had soaked Portella della Ginestra and 
Avola, causing Milan and all of Italy to explode in Piazza Fontana. The 
City of Happiness in the Roaring Twenties was an open-air 
slaughterhouse; people died in the streets, disappeared, and were 
dissolved in acid.
Meanwhile, in a well-known beach club, Don Vito Ciancimino, a prominent 
senator, and a magistrate could be seen dancing cheek to cheek with 
attractive ladies. This was, and still is, the Ferocious City where 
Generalissimo dalla Chiesa was sent to his death and Pio la Torre tried 
to fight the Mafia within his own home, only to be mercilessly murdered. 
Salvo Lima was killed, making Giulio Andreotti realize he was no longer 
immortal.
A world is ending: Palermo had fallen from the sky, the two banks were 
no longer there, the other mafiosi, the Corleones, had won, the mafia 
bourgeoisie had redefined itself while remaining in power. For those who 
believed in it, the anti-mafia movement was a missed opportunity; for 
others, it was a way to forge a new identity; for the state, it was a 
way of saying there was an anti-state that needed to be fought. We have 
the triumph of the culture of legality, which brings cops and 
magistrates into schools and today brings the military into classrooms, 
propagating obedience and war. There is no social justice; legality has 
no sense of freedom, but only replaces those in command.
The ruins need experienced men capable of anything, and so Orlando 
arrives, a man of culture, a politician of Catholic education, who leads 
the city out of the mafia war.
From a violent city, it becomes a normal city; the left disappears, 
dying as a Christian Democrat, and the right reorganizes. Meanwhile, 
Palermo, after an apparent cultural awakening, begins an anonymous 
transformation. Young people are the first to be affected, the historic 
center goes from rubble to renovations, ending up in the most unbridled 
touristification. The real city is no longer the old Palermo but the 
residential areas and the suburbs that are in flames, while the Quattro 
Canti and Via Macheda become a mafia factory.
Young people pour into the center, bringing their anger, weapons are 
exchanged, fights and shootings break out, drugs are consumed, the 
Pagliarelli prison fills up with young people from the suburbs, the red 
zones are useless and the cameras only monitor the citizens. There are 
shootings in Monreale, in Olivella, those who die are young and those 
who kill are too. The mafia is not dead, and in the youth of the suburbs 
it finds a new beginning. Are these supposed to be the proletariat 
storming heaven? They are certainly cannon fodder. You can hear the 
Kalashnikovs blasting the garages of entrepreneur Dragotto, a man who 
knows his way around the world, and who certainly can't be compared to 
Libero Grassi, killed by the Mafia amid the indifference of local 
businessmen at the time. In this situation, the Zen 2 neighborhood, a 
veritable banlieue, abandoned to its fate, is making headlines. It's a 
neighborhood with a strong human identity, home to the young people who, 
according to the cops, are demanding protection money from various 
businesses in the northern part of Palermo these days. These businesses 
are owned by owners who certainly don't adhere to the culture of legality.
The Mafia bourgeoisie, on the one hand, demands order, and on the other, 
does everything it can to nurture these young people as criminals. I 
don't have an ending to offer you-we're in a South American context-but 
you have to get your hands dirty in shit, blood, and piss to understand 
and act. One thing is certain: Palermo is shooting.

Northern Expansion Zone

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