International Socialists

Plenty of fine words flowed out of the 14th-century castle in Genoa, Italy, where the leaders of the world's most powerful countries met in July. The heads of state from the Group of Eight (G8) countries issued statements on everything from free trade to global warming.

 

But they sent their most important message a mile away - in a small square called the Piazza Alimonda, with two gunshots that killed Carlo Giuliani.

 

The message: Those who dare to disrupt their fancy gatherings in the struggle for global justice will pay a price.

 

But if Italy's right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his G8 buddies think that they've intimidated us, they have another thing coming.

 

On the day after Giuliani was gunned down, some 300,000 people took to the streets of Genoa in an extraordinary display of opposition to the G8 leaders and the system they preside over. This protest showed that those who care about global justice are more determined than ever that our voices will be heard.

 

 

David Zirin, from the American ISO, describes what he saw:

 

As we enter Genoa, a city of mountains by the sea, there is underwear hanging from countless windows.

 

This, believe it or not, is a sign of resistance. Billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, the new prime minister of Italy, decreed that no one in Genoa should hang underwear outside - so that other world leaders wouldn't view Italy as a "backwater." When people can't even hang their underwear outside, you know the weekend will be something we won't forget.

 

 

Thursday 19 July

As military helicopters fly overhead and barricades cut the city into pieces, the eerie calm that has hung over Genoa is punctured by a march of 50,000 people from Europe and beyond, in the name of immigrant rights. More than a march, it's a festival of resistance.

Every contingent chants in a different language. Marching bands play Hey, Big Spender. A Swedish group is clapping and singing the Southern Black spiritual This Little Light of Mine.

 

The feelings of solidarity and unity are overwhelming. Rosalie, an African-Italian trade unionist, says, "I'm here as an immigrant, but we have the right to cross borders however we please, just like their money."

 

A small group from Eritrea and Ethiopia march arm in arm. "Why should these eight people make decisions for the rest of the world?" they say. "Why did they have to close the city? They try to divide us, like they divide the city!" They walk away chanting the slogan of the day: "We are all illegals."

 

This anger, not just about the issues of the summit, but about what the summit has done to the city of Genoa, is ever-present - as seen by the number of residents in the streets and waving from their windows.

Pietro, a lifelong Genoa resident, was so angry at the Berlusconi government that he grabbed a framed picture of former Socialist President and anti-Mussolini hero Silvio Pertini. "Pertini fought the fascists and wrote the constitution," he says. "Now we have to do both again."

 

As the demonstration ends, people are already talking about possible violence over the weekend. The news reports say:

 

Today was a festival, will tomorrow be a war?

 

 

Friday 20 July

I'm sitting in Carlini stadium at 9.30 am, one gathering place for the Friday direct actions to penetrate the heavily guarded red zone that surrounds the G8 summit. Carlini is filled with very young, very confident people.

 

The direct-action group Tute Bianche and others are on the stadium floor, making shields ten feet high and wide. Many are wearing helmets and shoulder pads. All the "weapons" I see are defensive.

 

I ask one member of Tute Bianche what he thinks will happen today. He tells me that he thinks police attacks on protesters in Gothenburg, Sweden, during last month's European Union summit, backfired. "People are more together, and the numbers are greater," he says. "My prediction is that nothing will be the same after Genoa."

 

Some 20,000 to 30,000 of us march arm in arm toward the red zone, with Tute Bianche in the lead. As we sing and chant, we see huge plumes of smoke rise in the distance. We learn that street fighting with police has been widespread since the early morning. The smoke to our sides comes from burning cars.

 

The thick smoke directly in front of us is the tear gas. Masks and bandanas are immediately distributed.

 

All kinds of rumours are spreading about the fighting in front of us - which is impossible to see because of the narrow streets and the gas. A member of our contingent runs forward 150 yards - and brings back news.

 

"The front attempted to penetrate the red zone, and all hell broke loose," he says. "There was hand-to-hand combat where the police were beating people down with batons. The police seemed reckless. They laid into people and found a resistance that I don't think they expected. People fought back hard, so very hard."

 

At one point, a demonstrator tries to break a store window. This was the only store on the direct-action march route that had stayed open that day. Its elderly owner had been standing outside the shop, watching us with a smile. The young demonstrator tries to break the window with his fist, then picks up a rock.

 

About 12 demonstrators form a chain to protect the store - and physically push the young man away. As one veteran Italian leftist remarks, "That's how our movement should settle its questions - internally."

 

At 5.30, as we march back, the chant "Assassini!" suddenly rises up like a wave, from the front to back.

 

We hear that a young man was killed - perhaps 150 yards in front of us - by the police. We know no details at this point, but people are shaking and unsure of what this will mean for the mass demonstration tomorrow.

 

 

Saturday 21 July

The news is now clear, and the Reuters picture is all over the world. Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old from Rome, was shot twice in the head and run over by a military van. The headline on Berlusconi's newspaper says this was "in self-defence."

 

But every other Italian paper shows frame by frame how an officer in a police vehicle surrounded by street fighters executed this young man. He is the first person to be killed at an Italian protest in 24 years. If the first day of protest was striking by its absence of police, today is like a war zone.

 

On a hill overlooking us as we gather for the legal demonstration are about 15 police officers in a military formation. Some are in a sniper's pose. We break into a chant of "Assassini!" and point at them.

 

One of them fires a tear gas canister about 10 feet over our heads. It is an early notice that anyone who thought the police would be restrained after yesterday was wrong.

 

It's immediately clear that we are far greater than the 120,000 hoped for by march organisers. Later estimates will show that the march's numbers were more than 300,000.

 

Yesterday's killing is on everyone's mind. "Berlusconi Assassino!" is the loudest chant of the day. People are fearful, but confident that the police wouldn't dare attack such a large contingent.

 

We hear that the unions - which were supposed to make up the bulk of this march - didn't show. The tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of unexpected marchers are largely young people from Italy, streaming up and down the sides of the organised contingents.

 

As the march makes its first turn away from the red zone, a section of the group moves forward toward the massive line of police. The booms and tear gas return. The people of Genoa show their solidarity by sending water down to the street in buckets and hoses.

 

A huge bedsheet hangs from a window. It reads, "Welcome to Genoa, citizens of the world. Always toward victory." For a long moment, we feel the slogan of the weekend, which adorns almost every T-shirt and sticker in Genoa:

 

They are eight, we are six billion.

 

As the march ends, the tension still hangs in the heat. People start to leave - and the police attack. They don't go after the street fighters - the masked and padded fighters near the red zone - but about 30,000 peaceful protesters who are leaving town.

 

The police later raid the headquarters of the march organisers, the Genoa Social Forum, arresting more than 90 people and putting dozens in the hospital. According to later radio reports, jailed demonstrators are forced down on their knees and told to chant, "Long Live Mussolini."

 

The right to protest itself has been criminalised. There's no question that the three days in Genoa raised the stakes for the global justice movement. The leaders of the G8 bloodied their hands on Friday, and on Saturday, they clearly came back for more.

 

We need to expand our forces, deepen our trust, strengthen our unity - and be confident that a better future lies on our side of the barricades, not theirs.