Category Archives: History and Background Info

Brief history of the NO TAV movement

Posted on July 3, 2011 | 8 comments

Stop that train!

NO TAV (No to the High Speed Train) is a movement based in the Susa Valley in Piedmont that opposes the creation of the new high speed railway line between Turin and Lyon in France. This line is part of a EU project which plans to connect Lyon to Budapest and then onto Ukraine. Similar protest movements were active in the early 90s in Florence, Bologna and Rome, but their militancy and the brutal repression that this triggered in the Susa Valley has made the Piedmontese movement the most talked about. Continue reading →

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Posted in Contemporary Struggles, Movements, Etc, History and Background Info

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10 June 1924

Posted on June 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

Rome: Giacomo Matteotti is walking along the Tiber when he is attacked by a group of men and kidnapped. His body reappears a couple of months later, in August, outside Rome. Who was he, and what happened to him?

Giacomo Matteotti

Matteotti was a Socialist MP, at a time when the Socialist Party in Italy was still a working class party…before it became a nest of corrupted buffoons and millionaire thieves. In 1921 he had published a research on the rise of  Fascism in which he denounced – possibly for the first time in a written text – the violence and political use of the Fascist groups known as Camicie nere, Black shirts. In 1924 a book was published in London “The fascisti exposed; a year of fascist domination” (no idea how easy this is to find), in which he completed the work started in his previous piece, and meticulously described the Fascists’ violence and repression against political opponents. Continue reading →

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Posted in 20th Century, History and Background Info

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From Tute Bianche to the Book Bloc (by Uniriot)

Posted on February 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

What thread links the political experience of Tute Bianche with the Book Blocs we have seen last autumn on the streets of Rome and London? What is the link between the alter-globalisation movement of Seattle and Genoa and the student and youth movements that are now setting Europe on fire?  These two movements belong to two very different historical and political moments: that one exploded in the peak time of the expansion of globalization, while the current one gives voice to a generational rebellion against the crisis and the policies of austerity launched by most European government. (Uniriot)

Some Italian students from Uniriot (‘Network of Rebellious Universities’) have recently taken part to an event in London in which they discussed the recent  Italian and European student struggles. Here’s what they had to say, as published on the Uniriot website: From Tute Bianche to the Book Bloc.

Book Blocs at students demo in London 2010

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Posted in Contemporary Struggles, Movements, Etc, History and Background Info, Student Struggles

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Europe Calling! Reclaim Education!

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

Just found this very interesting flyer on the very brilliant website Uniriot Network, made after the latest European student gathering last spring. It explains very well the links and similarities between recent student struggles in Europe.

It’s 4 pages long, download them here: P1, P2, P3, P4. Read more about it on the Uniriot Network website.

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Posted in Contemporary Struggles, Movements, Etc, History and Background Info, Student Struggles

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