Globalization—For the Welfare of Whom?

Stefano Agnoletto is the brother of Vittorio Agnoletto, public representative of the Genoa Social Forum.

There are many thousands of peaceful people, a marvelous atmosphere. Clergy, activists, volunteers and just normal people, on Friday we begin the Issue Areas in a blockaded city. The various groups participating will converge in different points of the city to have a carnivalesque "siege" against the "red area" [the area around the G8 meeting where demonstrations were not permitted] with street theater, dancing, and slogans.

Photo: Independent Media Center

At this point, members of the "Black Bloc" arrive. Some are seen chatting with police, others just come out of police crowds. Most of them speak German. They start to break everything. Police and Carabinieri just stand there.

Then the Black Bloc heads for the first issue area. They arrive armed to the teeth. The police go after them, and demonstrators find themselves attacked first by the black bloc and then by the police...The black bloc leaves the square and starts to vandalize the city systematically. 300-400 of the Black Bloc roam Genoa, and whoever guides them seems to know the city very well. It’s incredible. They move with military discipline, infiltrate everywhere, some leaders shout orders which are promptly followed by the whole group. And, shortly afterwards, police and Carabinieri make their appearance.

Starhawk is an activist, author, and nonviolence trainer.

I was there when the Carabinieri [the Italian Military Police] raided the IndyMedia Center and the Diaz school, in Genoa, at the end of the protest against the G8 meeting. We heard the shouts and screams, couldn’t get out the door, ran upstairs and hid, fearing for our lives. Eventually the cops found us, but we were the lucky ones. A Member of Parliament was in our building; lawyers and media arrived. There was some obscure Italian legal reason why the police could be deterred. They withdrew.

But across the street, at the school where people were sleeping and where another section of the Independent Media were located, the police entered: the media and the politicians were kept out. And the police beat people. They beat people who had been sleeping, who held up their hands in a gesture of innocence and cried out, "Pacifisti! Pacifisti!" They beat the men and the women. They broke bones, smashed teeth, shattered skulls. They left blood on the walls, on the windows, a pool of it in every spot where people had been sleeping. When they had finished their work, they brought in the ambulances. All night long we watched from across the street as the stretchers were carried out, as people were taken to the jail ward of the hospital, or simply to jail. And in the jail, many of them were tortured again, in rooms with pictures of Mussolini on the wall.

This really happened. Not back in the nineteen-thirties, but on the night of July 21 and the morning of July 22, 2001.

Italian police officer interviewed by Marco Preve in La Repubblica

"I’m sorry to say that it’s all true. Even more. I can still feel the smell from those hours, the smell from the arrestees’ feces, those who didn’t get to go to the toilet. But that night started a week before when hundreds of agents of the prison police arrived.

"What happened at the school and continued here at Bolzaneto [a police barracks temporarily converted into a prison camp] was a suspension of rights, an empty space in the constitution. I tried to tell colleagues, but they only answered that ‘we don’t have to be afraid, our back is covered.’

"That night the main gate opened continuously. Out of the vans came youth while getting a beating. They made them stand against the wall. When they came in they smashed their heads against the wall. They peed on someone, others were beaten if they didn’t sing fascist songs. A girl was vomiting blood and the chiefs of the prison police just watched. To the ladies they said that they were going to rape them with their sticks."

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