Report On the Camping Of Struggle In Sicily

(Marzamemi July 23-30 th 2000)

 

The Struggle’s camping of  Marzamemi, in Sicily,  is hardly concluded:  over  hundred companions have given life and strength to a week  of debates,  mobilizations, meetings that have crossed the whole region Sicily.

From Trapani to Gela, from Marzamemi to Avola, is looked for in all the ways  to make visible and incisive  our presence on the Sicilian territory, not   neglecting, for this the discussions and the debates to which  the  representatives of big part of  Sicilian and national antagonists realities have taken part  .

Leaving aside the rhetoric, we think opportune to socialize  schematically  the events, the discussions and therefore the results of  this meeting.

 

STRUGGLE’ S   INITIATIVES

 

27 July: a demostration of hundreds of people has crossed the center of   Trapani to denounce the barbarity of the center of temporary detention for   migrants “Serraino Vulpitta”, the same lager where, in a fire in  the  last December, 6 nord-african immigrants died, locked in  a room,  without way out.  The mobilizations of the Sicilian anti-racist movement already in past  made pressure and reports to hurry the closing of this  lager.

To two days from the demostration, the news arrives: the “Serraino Vulpitta” is  seized by the magistracy, the prefect of Trapani is  denounced for  homicide and omissions of office actions and office abuse. 

Therefore the procession becomes a moment to vindicate this partial victory  and above all to confirm the firm opposition, now and always,  about a  possible reopening of the “Serraino Vulpitta”  and of any other  “State’s lager”  (with the closing of the Trapani’s lager, in  Sicily all the  centers of temporary detention have been closed).

 

28 July: back from Trapani, a camping delegation picks up  the invitation of the same workers in struggle to go to the Petrochemical one of Gela,  where from three days about ten workers are barricaded under a torrid sun on a tower of 20 meters, to oppose against the dismissal of 54 workers.  The  general strike is revoked by the federate labour unions the preceding day.

Nevertheless, in way entirely  autorganized, the same workers picket since  the first hours of the  morning the factory completely militarized: the  participants to the camping  mix themselves, discuss and give solidarity   with the garrison of the workers out the gates of the factory.  The  delegation of the camping, composed by representatives of unemployed  movements of  struggle, structures of the unions of base, social centers,  “dismisses” confirming their own availability to support  materially and politically the mobilization under the office to Rome that  the workers of  Gela   are preparing.

 

29 July: in the same days of the Sicilian camping  , the multinational  of  job temporary "Adecco " open a new center to Avola, a city to few kilometers  from the camping, country symbol of the country struggles in the  postwar  period (different laborers died during the revolts in the sixties).  Against  the old ones and the new forms of the caporalato, the camping of struggle it  decides to invade Avola to communicate and to denounce to the city this  villainous presence.

 

THE DEBATES

 

Beyond  struggle’s initiatives  , that  have no character of  extemporaneousness but are inserted in runs of social intervention that the   sicilian companions  already have standing for years or however  retain  necessary to equip, the datum as many meaningful it is represented by the  debates and by the daily discussions that inside  the camping  have taken  form. Essentially the collective reflection is articulated  around four  seams of discussion:

 

- IMMIGRATION

- JOB AND NO JOB

- BIOTHECNOLOGY

- TERRITORIES’S MILITARIZATION

 

It would be rather riductive to try to contain in few lines the wealth of debate and experiences that in Marzamemi  is compared in shut and deepened way. The promoting Sicilian realities of the camping have after all undertaken the task to stretch as soon as possible a budget and a synthesis  of this week of discussion and struggle.

On our behalf we want only to point out some hypotheses of mobilization for the next year emerged from the discussions:

 

- A conference/seminary on the biothecnologies in autumn.

- A national mobilization of all the precarious and the LSUs for half  October (before the expiration of October 31, when the state will cut  about the 50% of the benefits to tihs state temporary workers).

- A  struggle on the matter of the guaranteed salary, also departing from an active critic to the Least Income of insertion and the social politics in  general. Regarding the specific matter of the mobilizations for the closing  of the lager and the opening of the frontiers, the realities present to the

camping are riconvocates on the occasion of the national meeting that will  be September 2 to Brescia, during the meeting of  “Radio Onda d’Urto”.

 

The Naples’s comrades presents on the meeting of Marzamemi