In Catania they brought forward Halloween by a day. Not at night. Halloween happened at dawn on 30 October, at 5:30 in the morning. In place of pumpkins, mummies and vampires, the anti-riot troops presented themselves with shields, helmets and truncheons. The security forces in their completeness. The emptying out of Experia, one of the few social centres in Catania that has been going for 17 years, happened with the use of truncheons against unarmed citizens. In the video you can see people with their hands up reaching for the sky, on the one side and on the other side pure violence. The armed against the unarmed. The social centre was occupied without authorisation. But after almost 20 years of existence of a space for the free association of young people could they not have done an amnesty? Or Is that only valid for tax dodgers and those who hold mafia capital protected by the Fiscal Shield? Or to negotiate instead of to beat with truncheons. Could the town of Catania not prepare an alternative area for the young people? Catania has become degraded, dirty, and bankrupt and their priority is to close down a place where people gather? People in the social centre report “hundreds of Experia supporters baton-charged giving rise to scores of contusions.” Even the most docile donkey revolts if he’s hit too frequently. The Italian citizens are getting used to being beaten up with truncheons every time they demonstrate. Women, old people, young people, labourers, are habitually beaten up with truncheons by the security forces. But who gives them this right? The right to beat up innocent people who are protesting? It’s OK to stop citizens and ask for their documents, even take them to the “Questura“ for checking. But not beat them to get blood by lifting up the truncheon to the skies as you can see in the single frame from the video in this post. Citizens are not beasts as perhaps some of those in Parliament persist in thinking.
Yesterday, 31 October, in Catania, more than 1,000 people demonstrated to protest against the closure of the social centre. “Whoever plants wind, gathers a tempest” was written on a banner.