Naomi Klein :
©znetupdates, 5 September 2001
After Genoa
Part of the tourist ritual of traipsing through Italy
in August is
marvelling at how the locals have mastered the art of
living -- and then
complaining bitterly about how everything is closed.
"So civilised," you can hear North Americans remarking
over four-course
lunches. "Now somebody open up that store and sell me
some Pradas NOW!"
This year, August in Italy was a little different. Many
of the southern
beach towns where Italians hide from tourists were half-empty,
and the
cities never paused. When I arrived two weeks ago, journalists,
politicians, and activists all reported that it was the
first summer of
their lives when they didn't take a single day off.
How could they? First there was Genoa, then: After Genoa.
The fall-out from protests against the G8 in July is redrawing
the
country's political landscape - and everybody wants a
change to shape
the results. Newspapers are breaking circulation records.
Meetings -
anything having to do with politics - are bursting at
the seams. In
Naples I went to an activist planning session about an
upcoming NATO
summit; more than 700 people crammed into a sweltering
classroom to
argue about "the movement's strategy After Genoa." Two
days later, near
Bologna, a conference about politics "After Genoa" drew
2000; they
stayed until 11 p.m.
The stakes in this period are high. Were the 200,000 (some
say 300,000)
people on the streets in July an unstoppable force that
will eventually
unseat Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi? Or will Genoa
be the beginning
of a long silence, a time when citizens equate mass gatherings
with
terrifying violence?
For the first weeks after the summit, attention was focused
squarely on
the brutality of the Italian police: the killing of 23
year-old Carlo
Giuliani, reports of torture in the prisons, the bloody
midnight raid on
a school where activists slept.
But Mr. Berlusconi, whose training is in advertising,
is not about to
relinquish the meaning of Genoa that easily. In recent
weeks, Mr.
Berlusconi has been furiously recasting himself as "a
good father"
determined to save his family from imminent danger. Lacking
a real
threat, he has manufactured one: an obscure United Nations
conference on
hunger, scheduled for Rome, November 5-9.
To much media fanfare, Mr. Berlusconi has announced that
the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) meeting will not be held
in "sacred Rome"
because "I don't want to see our cities smashed and burnt."
Instead, it
will be held somewhere remote (much like Canada's plans
to hold the next
G8 in secluded Kananaskis).
This is shadow boxing at its best. No one planned to disrupt
the
meeting. The event would have attracted some minor protest,
mostly from
critics of genetically modified crops. Some hoped the
meeting would be
an opportunity to debate the root causes of hunger -
much as those
pushing for slavery reparations are doing in Durban.
Jacques Diouf, director of FAO, seems to be relishing
the unexpected
attention. After all, despite being saddled with the
crushing mandate of
cutting world hunger in half, the FAO attracts almost
no outside
interest -- from politicians or protesters. The organization's
biggest
problem is that it is so uncontroversial, it's practically
invisible.
"For all these arguments.about this change of venue, I
would like to say
I am very grateful," Mr. Diouf told reporters last week.
"Now people in
every country know that there will be a summit to talk
about the
problems of hunger."
But even though the threat of anti-FAO violence was dreamed
up by Mr.
Berlusconi, his actions are part of a serious assault
on civil liberties
in After Genoa Italy. On Sunday, Italy's Parliamentary
Relations
Minister Carlo Giovanardi said that during November's
FAO meeting,
"demonstrations in the capital will be prohibited. It
is a duty," he
said, "to ban demonstrations in certain places and at
certain times."
There may be a similar ban on public assembly in Naples
during the NATO
meeting, which has also been moved out of the city.
There was even talk of cancelling a concert by Manu Chao
in Naples last
Friday. The musician supports the Zapatistas, sings about
"clandestinos"
and played to the crowds in Genoa - that, apparently,
was enough for the
police to smell a riot in the making. In a country that
remembers the
logic of authoritarianism, this is all chillingly
familiar: first create a climate of fear and tension,
then suspend
constitutional rights in the interest of protecting "public
order."
So far, Italians seem unwilling to play into Mr. Berlusconi's
hand. The
Manu Chao concert took place as planned. There was, of
course, no
violence. But 70,000 people did dance like crazy in the
pouring rain, a
much-needed release after a long and difficult summer.
The crowds of police ringing the concert looked on. They
seemed tired,
like they could have used a day off. www.nologo.org