www.newsandletters.org
|
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2001 Genoa, Italy-A scene played out on a corner of town in Genoa on the 20th of July. Two men were facing each other-a 23-year-old standing in the street armed with a small fire extinguisher and the other a 20-year-old armed with a pistol inside an armored carabinieri Land Rover. The rest sadly is history. Why the carabiniere went for the head we don't know. He seemed a good shot, got two on target. Why didn't he aim for a different part of the body, especially when the target's arms were raised either to throw the canister or to shield himself? The magistrate will be asking the same questions, as the case has officially been declared an "unvoluntary homicide." Once he fell the Jeep reversed and ran him over twice. True, the car was jammed against the wall, but its engine was running and could have reversed in full power to pull away from the situation, as it did after the shooting. Why did the carabiniere shoot then? Confusion or following a policy of "shoot-if-in-doubt-and-we-answer-for-you-later." The carabiniere was declared to be in a state of shock and was treated in a hospital, while Carlo Giuliani was sent to "chill out" in the morgue awaiting official autopsy, forensic tests, and all sorts of time wasting practices. Tragic as this event was, it is surprising that there were no more deaths around town. Even the scale of destruction around town was far less than the dramatic footage we saw on TV screens. The damage was almost exclusively against big business and those associated with it. True, some bus shelters and telephone booths were damaged too, but these are common scenes around every big city in the UK after a Saturday night out, every week! Let us keep things in perspective. Large-scale public protests have a big role in making people aware of the issues, as well as being a vent for people's anger and helplessness. They can be peaceful, and should be in order to bring maximum support into the street and show the world that the most destructive tools (physical and otherwise) are still in the hands of those who protect property. Such demonstrations are not a substitute, but a complement to other forms of organized and long-term public action like organizing local groups to bring pressure on the bureaucracy and to initiate change. That is why Oxfam and Drop the Debt leadership were wrong for not taking part in the march that was organised by the Genoa Social Forum. Jubilee South and others did, to their credit. Hundreds of people who support Drop the Debt and Oxfam and other UK charities took part in the march individually and showed that they were ahead of the leaders of these organizations in seeing the need for showing their anger in public for what is going on in the world. Curiously, organizations that pulled out of the march at the last minute proved the anarchists right. Take direct action on your own, march under your own steam and peel away if things get rough (as Rickshaw freedom riders did). I wish there were enough of us around when the two young men confronted each other on Friday July 20. -Dr. Mahmood Messkoub The author is a Rickshaw freedom rider, and an economist at Leeds University Business School, who cycled with a team to take a rickshaw from Leeds to Genoa as part of the Drop the Debt campaign.-Editor |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
