We spoke to a few activists that are participating in Agora99, a network aimed at connecting various local struggles around Europe.
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Some participants of Agora99, a network aiming at connecting various local struggles around Europe, met a number of activists in Istanbul on October 24-25. We were amazed by the diversity of organizations that participate in Agora99 activities, so we spoke to a few activists on what they do, why and how...
Firstly, one of the participants ANNALENA DI GIOVANNI informed us about different struggles around Italy and detailed Agora99.
Could you talk briefly about the range of different groups and organizations from Italy that participate in Agora99?
Agora tends to be pretty horizontal as a communication platform; by this I mean that the territoriality - the very localized nature of a struggle - is privileged above nationality. You can easily find groups which cooperate on the basis of a common problem, or a common tactic, and which on that transnational basis of commonality, are more connected than on the national level. It is basically a platform, and a very loose one, ready for use whenever one wants to connect with others. As such, it's not always easy to identify who is in and who is out. Some are on the mailing list, yet you do not get to know about them before you meet them in person. The easiest to name component from Italy is the Roman network - the one that is behind Dinamo, the Officina Zero occupied factory, the chambers of precarious and autonomous workers, and so on. Then there are the realities which could not directly come to this pre-meeting: for example the Precarious Connections network from Bologna, which is another of the groups behind the organisation of the Social Strike. They have worked closely for years with migrant groups in this, because it's on cheap and vulnerable labour that you can erode the rights of "citizen" workers. So, unless you coordinate together on an equal basis in political actions, you don't get any far.
This was done during the "migrant Strike", a day in which Italians were left without migrant labour for 24 hours: no cleaners, no construction workers, no cheap waiters, and above all no logistic workers - those ones who deliver food to supermarkets and who guarantee the daily supply to cities. The labour behind meeting between these struggles took years! But then you have also groups that coordinate to occupy houses - this has become a form of alternative "strike" for precarious workers: you break the chain by interrupting the rent economy behind the housing market, which in Italy like in Istanbul is at the center of enormous financial speculations. So you mix necessity (who can pay a rent nowadays!) with advancing the conflict. Then I discovered that there are self-organized health groups. The main network in this case are the Social Clinics in Greece, who challenge the crisis and the cuts against public health by organizing a system of health assistance for those in need. So you are basically providing a service, but also unmasking the business behind privatized health. If normal citizens can be cured by a self-sustaining system, how comes governments cannot afford it? But in Agora I discovered that also in Italy there is a similar (although smaller) network, which provides health services to sexual workers. then there are "territorial" struggles: those struggles against megaprojects, blending environmentalist and anti-capitalist stances. For example, the struggle against cruiser ships in Venice, a project similar to that of Galataport in Istanbul. Or the struggle against the business of toxic waste, which in Naples has cause massive profits for some, and massive cancer epidemics for the citizens who live in the areas where the garbage has been disposed.
What is the main purpose of the Social Strike? What is the main strategy behind it? How is it being organized?
Obviously, living in Istanbul as I do, I haven't been part of the organization behind the Social Strike. But I have tried to take part to meetings whenever I could, and based on that the first definition I would give of the Social Strike is that it is a journey. The path has started years ago from early attempts to recompose classes and cultural groups which do not communicate and perhaps did not even suspect that they have something in common. It then proceeded with local meetings, and then larger meetings, and then again "traveling" meetings of representatives which would then get back to their groups to report about decisions. The main idea behind the Social strike is to re-establish a balance of power there were the current economy has stripped workers- any kind of worker - from the power of negotiating with its employer. Italy is a country where long term contracts don't exist anymore, and any employer invariably tells his worker "you are lucky, because I make you work". Work has become a richness of its own, in fact: for each free "training position" to add on your CV for no money, you will find thousands of aplications on your desk. The job market, or should I say the stockmarket of jobs, in Italy has literally liquified workers rights at a speed that today no one can anymore call oneself fully employed or fully unemployed.
So, let me give you an example of what lack of balance of power translates into. You have, say, a graphic designer, a freelance journalist, a research assistant, and a migrant cleaner. Oh, let me add a factory worker to the lot. The graphic designer and freelance journalists are autonomous workers; that means that they believe their not being able to make ends meet, never knowing how to live next month, and so on, are part of their privileged status: it is, they believe, part and parcel of their freedom. The migrant cleaner has no status and no autonomy: she (or he) is chained to a boss. The day the boss fires her, she will instantly loose her residency permit for staying in Europe. That means she will be arrested, taken into a migrant center (those kind of concentration camps that Europe has now asked Erdoğan to relocate in Turkey), sent somewhere in Libya or the Tunisian desert or the Syrian war, and it doesn’t matter if she has children at home waiting for her. Then you have the research assistant: he will never have a position, but he keeps on working the equivalent of three professors in order to maintain his status of intellectual laborer. And here comes the factory worker: he belongs to a dying species, that of the industrial era of Italy. Unlike the rest of the group, he is the only one who can strike, and organize through a union: but if he does it, the day after his factory will relocate somewhere in Turkey or Poland and leave him jobless. So, each one of the workers I listed is invisible to other - because these are not, normally, social groups that interact a lot. Therefore they don't know that they have three things in common:
1) The same miserable salary, regardless of the privileges some think they have.
2) Their vulnerability in regards to the future – not knowing whether they will still be able to make a living next month.
3) Their powerless. Because when you are unable to save money, and you are so disposable that you can be left unemployed the month after, how can you expect to have any power of negotiation? You can stay at home and strike, if you want - someone else will rush to take your job for less.
The social strike is therefore the journey to recompose together all these invisible workers as a single social group, and fight to gain back the power to negotiate. So what happened was a country-wide act of surfacing to visibility: thousands of designers, researchers, waiters, cleaners, and so on, who for a day tried to do their bit to say that they join the struggle. Some committed little acts of sabotage at work, some simply took a picture of themselves wearing the signs of the strike – those who had the right to strike, stayed at home. Unions, although not part of the organization, decided to join. Then there were protest marches, and social media campaigns. Obviously this is only the beginning. The goal, at this stage, and with a financial crisis erasing any possibility of criticism is more that of counting how many thousands are there, willing to go ahead. Literally, it's a journey to surface from invisibility as a social force.
Occupied factory OFFICINE ZERO / Rome, Italy
Officine Zero is a train maintenance factory that was occupied by workers in February 2012. Since day one, it has been supported by many different groups and movements and now operates as a common space of work and production, free of bosses. We asked about the details of the occupied factory to Alioscia Castronovo and Elisa Gigliarelli from Officine Zero.
Can you briefly tell the story how and when Officine Zero was occupied and who supported?
The RSI Railway train maintenance factory failed in 2012. In February, 33 workers occupied the factory in order to reclaim the salaries and fight against the plans of the bosses. After some weeks they received the support of the occupied social centers, student movement and neighborhood assembly of Casalbertone, where the factory is situated. The connection between these different sectors of labour made possible to start the public assemblies called "Crazy idea" supporting the workers struggle and imagining a new project. After the failure of the enterprise because of the privatization of the train company and the speculation of the bosses, the factory started transforming in a self-managed space of common work, and in June 2013 the new occupation came to be and a factory without bosses appeared in Rome, based on common decision in assembly and starting to connect through alternative market experiences and producing new forms of working and social relationships focusing on solidarity and mutualism in the middle of the crisis.
What are the different things that Officine Zero does?
Offine Zero exists as a self-organized factory from the 1st of June 2013. OZ is a common project of former workers of the factory, precarious and autonomous workers, students, and unemployed people that joined the project in order to create a new experiment of working without bosses.
At Officine Zero (Zero stands for zero exploitation, zero contamination, zero bosses) a number of projects are taking place: the main one is the reuse and recycling project, through laboratories (siderugy, tapestry and carpentry, and a common project on up-cycling and repairing). Along with this, there is a welding workshop, a tapestry, and a carpentry. There is also a coworking space, where self employed and precarious workers share costs, spaces, and working projects. In this place there is also one of the Chambers of Self-employed and Precarious Labour, which gives legal and fiscal aid to workers, and support to individual and collective actions and struggles. There is also a canteen, and a student dorm occupied by university students inside the factory.
What are the different groups and organs that Officine Zero is in interaction with?
Officine Zero has a stand at the monthly market of direct and organic producers, where it helps organize small events for the neighborhood. It also has a monthly Sunday opening to share its work with who is interested, to who wants to support the project. The Chambers of Self-employed and Precarious Labour at Officine Zero is a new form of metropolitan unionism present in various areas of Rome. It participates and often hosts a number of meetings and platforms for workers' struggles, such as the Social Strike, and a platform for the right to the city. Doing so, it often encounters other worker’s struggles, and social spaces in the metropolitan area. It also works with associations that support second-hand dealers and environmental issues, in order to plan the reconversion of the productive site. Activist and researchers are also collaborating with the university of Rome, organizing seminars and public events debating the issues of self organization of production, struggles for the right to the city and against privatization, speculation and austerity, connecting workers, students and activist in an open political debate.
Could you tell briefly about the occupied factory experience in Europe?
During the crisis new experiences of occupied factories appeared in Europe, especially in the Euro-Mediterranean area. Between 2011 and 2012 the workers struggles experimented new ways of fighting, occupying the factories and starting projects of working without bosses, inspired by the experiences in Argentina over the last 10 years. The Viome factory in Thessaloniki, Greece, is producing organic cleaning products and soaps for one and a half years, supported by social movements and solidarity network. In France, Pilpa Enterprise, which produces ice-cream, is occupied and under workers control. Just like Fralib in Marseille, producing tea, is struggling against the transnational corporation Unilever, and has obtained this last summer the possibility to take in her hands the factory, the machines and started the production under workers control. In Italy, Officine Zero in Rome, and Rimaflow in Milan, are both based on mutualism, self-organization and cooperative of reuse and recycle. A new one appeared in Sicily some weeks ago. The Messina beer factory, after its failure, is now producinf as a cooperative organized by the workers.
All these factories met in November 2013 in Agora99 second meeting in Rome. And then they met again in January 2014 in Marseille in the occupied factory Fralib for the first Euro-Mediterranean meeting of Workers Economy, which is a space of debate, exchange and political organization held every year in South America. Activists of solidarity networks with occupied factories, workers and researchers come from Europe and South and Central America for this meeting, and connecting and enhance the experiences of struggle and self-management of work. The idea is to get connected with the struggles, that in Europe are going on counter-attacks the diktat of the troika and the new division of labour within the continental space. It’s a great challenge for all the social movements and for the workers: connecting class struggle with a new project, the self management of production without bosses, questioning capitalism and building an alternative day by day, taking their lives in their hands.
INTERVENTIONISTISCHE LINKE – Interventionist Left / Germany
Interventionist Left, which also organizes Blockupy, is one of the participants of Agora99. Interventionist Left offers an alternative labour struggle for today with a shared desire to overcome the ineffectiveness of a fragmented and powerless radical left. Anton Haffner from Interventionist Left answered our questions:
How do you explain the main purpose of starting Interventionist Left activities?
The conditions for socially relevant radical leftist politics in Germany and Austria are poor. The large majority quietly accepts and supports the ruling conditions, while large swaths of the marginalized radical left are trapped in academic debate and self-referred quarrels. We want to overcome the marginalization of the Left by intervening in larger social conflicts, thus deepening emerging cracks in the polished surface of the system of domination and achieving concrete successes. For us, that means to get involved in local struggles such as conflicts over rent and housing, struggles of refugees, coalitions against Neo-Nazis and nationalism or feminist struggles for reproductive rights. But it also means to organize widely visible actions of civil disobedience which make our positions heard in public and which also aim towards a personal empowerment and radicalization of those who participate.
Can you talk briefly about how you are organized and how you work?
Over the last year, groups from more than 20 cities in Germany and Austria have united as ‘interventionist left’ from a shared desire to overcome the ineffectiveness of a fragmented and powerless radical left. We thus bring together different historical experiences and personal situations, theoretical orientations and political points of focus. We discuss central strategic and organizational concerns on our plenary assemblies every few months, but most political work is done in working groups and in the respective cities. We trust in the autonomy of all working groups and aspire to reach decisions in a participatory and collective manner. Accordingly, internal structures of domination also have to be addressed continuously. In almost all our actions, we cooperate with and learn from other groups and collectives from civil society actors to grass-roots initiatives and other radical groups – whether in the neighborhood or on a transnational scale like in the Agora99 process.
Can you tell briefly how the ECB Frankfurt protest took place?
Since 2011, large protest movements in Southern Europe challenged the system of austerity imposed by the so-called Troika of European Commission, International Monetary Fund and ECB. However, in Germany – in the ‘eye of the storm’ – the underlying neoliberal capitalist ideology and German ‘national interests’ were seldom put in question. In collaboration with other groups from Germany and beyond, we decided to symbolically block the ECB with large and colorful demonstrations. The ECB that has its headquarters in Frankfurt stands out as an antidemocratic institution that systematically privileges Capital’s interest over the situation of those who have to suffer from its policies. While the protest was answered with massive police repression and a denial of the right to demonstrate, we still managed to mobilize thousands of people.
Stronger transnational connections and the Agora99 process were the another result of these mobilizations. A transnational perspective means for us that – while keeping different situations and approaches in mind – many issues such as precarity, right to the city or right-wing and fundamentalist backlashes are shared across geographical distances, and we can work collectively to get closer to our goals. Also, the process of constituting counter-hegemonic power and lived alternatives has to cross national (and EU) borders, if the ruling power is also increasingly constituted on an international level.
Currently, the ECB is moving into a new 1.2-billion euro building: We are set to block the opening festivities of those in power next year and to promote an alternative from below.
