Earth First Padova (Italia) Call Out for December 11

December 11, 2010: a day of struggle to defend our future

translated by Lilac

At the beginning of October 2010, significant efforts had taken place to combat the megaprojects of our country in Messina, Florence, and the Val di Susa had launched an appeal for a week of action “to gather, from the far North to the Deep South of Italy impoverished by speculation, resigned to degradation, drugged by distorted information, devastated by a huge cast of concrete.”

People responded to the call in the tens of thousands, to say no to the bridge over the Strait, no audio-visual subliminal advertisement on the route to Florence, NO high tension electricity lines and high speed trains for Lyon-Turin. In those same days the citizens of Stuttgart took to the streets to reject the draft of a megaprojects reflecting our own reasons: a bridge of solidarity had joined them, and our struggles.

The response of Messina, Florence and the Susa Valley was a sign of recovery of a country that resists a country that fights the intertwining politics / business / mafia; that opposes the destruction of the environment and defends the common good; that does not accept the logic of the “state of emergency” and requires a policy capable of looking to the future; that is opposed to the militarization of the territories and the return to nuclear power; that rejects the cancellation of rights and defends the democratic spaces of participation. It is a country that wants to be protagonists of its own future and does not intend to use the policy governed by lobbyists; a country that practices political unity, and is capable of giving voice to those who are organized from the bottom, responding to needs without blackmailing the party secretaries.

Today we launch a new appeal: a day of struggle that sees widespread protests at the local level to join with the force of reason against the violence of a political mafia attacking the conditions of life in the name of profit. From Vicenza, flooded not only by water in a region consumed by overbuilding but mostly from the mud of a military base which is a tool for policy of aggression against other peoples and militarization of the territory, to Messina, which is not resigned to having to endure the bridge of the special interests and the business; from the Val di Susa with the determination of twenty years of popular resistance, to Naples and the Campania region where dissent is hidden by the waste and lies of politicians and gangsters with names and surnames; from L’Aquila, which was able to raise its voice from under the rubble of an earthquake—a tragedy for many and a new business opportunity for a few—to denounce the militarization disguised as reconstruction, to many realities around the country that will not withstand megaprojects that bear only the scope and destruction of the corporations.

We will organize two appointments in all, in the Val di Susa and Terzigno. The appointment of the South will try to bring together, in one inter-parade, all the experiences that have long criticized the territories and the environment, causing widespread pollution. The high level of conflict expressed by the resistance of Terzigno and Giugliano has shown how it is possible not to yield to the arrogance of a corrupt political power. After years of instrumental use of the state of emergency, characterized by the suspension of the rule of law (police overtime, production of special laws and militarization of the territory), it is time to reaffirm, by a single body, which we will no longer willing to accept the degradation imposed by profit.

The need is to find ourselves in a single day, from different areas but equally contaminated, to give concrete form to a shared horizon of the contents of a dispute that arises at this stage the fight, reject the effects of current environmental policies, place the needs / desires of the population first, defend ourselves and our land from the aggression of privatizing public goods, and produce self-determination of social policy as a direct and autonomous organization in his life.

December 11: The next day becomes a struggle to say NO to the devastation of the environment and the militarization of the territories, NO to the unnecessary megaprojects with destructive and unsustainable costs. NO to the logic of the emergency of waste, NO to cancellation of rights. This is a day of struggle for the defense of territories, to assert the interests of the people, and a signal to immigrants forced to climb the crane to be visible to tell them that the country taking to the streets is on their side.

On the same date, there will also be held demonstrations in other cities in Europe, promoted by a coordinating committee that brings together Spanish, French, Italian, German and Slovenian who oppose the High Speed Train, on this occasion we can build a bridge between the different struggles: the longest bridge over the Strait of that should never be.

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