DEJA VU
Report from Rome - October 4, 2003
by Erik Valencic
I grasp for air, which is filled with tear gas, and run like hell. I will continue to run till my legs are able to carry me. I look right and left. It's OK, my friends are still with me. Predrag, Ana, Matej and Bor are running next to me. Their faces are red from all the tear gas, I guess mine is too. We continue to run between apartment blocks and have absolutely no idea where to go next. At least four robocops are pursuing us, although they are quite far behind. In panic we ask two women, if they can please let us inside their block, but they fiercly refuse. Predrag helplessly screams at them "Bastardi!", and we continue to run behind the block, where a tall fence greets us. That's it, we are stuck, unless... We start climbing over the fence. I go first and then help my friends over. An old lady stands on her balcony and directs us where to go next. I constantly look towards the corner of the block, but cops are nowhere to be seen. I only hear far-away screams. We all know we need to get out of here as soon as possible. I look behind me and realize we are nowhere. I see no houses or blocks, just a couple of fields covered with tall grass, and a couple of trees. There is a small, improvised football playground on our left, no hideout place at all. It seems as if we are not in Rome anymore. We proceed through grass and turn right on a small road, which takes us quickly back to the city streets. A carabinieri helicopter circles directly above our heads. We suspect police is already on its way to get us. We need to get off the streets, immediately. We finally find a small bar and settle inside. We order coffee and try to get our heads together. It's time to decide, what to do next.
Everything I have just described happened within seven minutes and not a second more.
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October 4 was the day, when the media godfather and neofascist, Silvio Berlusconi, opened the Ingovernmental Conference in Rome. The 15 heads of governments of European 'Union' met in Congress Palace (Palazzo dei Congressi) in elite neighbourhood Eur (set up by Mussolini) to ratify the draft of a constitution agreement. This agreement doesn't reflect the peoples' requests, it only presents the consenz of those in power. It doesn't grant new rights, it only restricts the old ones. This agreement expends the rule of Banks, corporate profits and fortifies the Schengen Wall, upon which rests the new European barbarity. Agreement in question doesn't guarantee peace, equality, food, shelter, freedom of knowledge, better comunication flows, etc. It only gives more power to those, who already have far to much of it.
October 4 was also a day, when the streets of Rome were occupied by tens of thousands of activists for global justice, union members, emigrants, anarchists, Disobedienti, young and the old, people of all colours and races. We walked down the streets of Rome with a single message for those inside the Eur Palazzo dei Congressi: "THERE IS 15 OF YOU, WHILE THERE IS 400.000.000 OF US!" The march started loudly a few kilometers away from Eur, where it was headed. The first sight of the march was a bit confusing. Everywhere you looked, you would see nothing but communist red flags. These were the unions. The big unions brought with them trucks equiped with sound systems. Loud music was being constantly disrupted by the leaders, who used the sound system to tell everyone else, why is it so important to be out on the streets on this day. Then it was quickly back to Manu Chao or Bandera Rossa. Next to the unions marched Action Studenti, an organized network of students, who fight for the rights of housing. Their slogans were very similar to the ones scanted by a group of emigrants, who demanded equal rights, specially a right to a decent life. The number of red flags could maybe be compared only to the number of flags of rainbow colours with PEACE written on them. Peace and anti-war symbols were present all around. There was a good one I remember: WE DON'T WANT YOUR WAR, WE DON'T WANT YOUR PEACE! The most organized group seemed to be the Disobedienti, activist network that practises civil disobedience. They came up with the idea of a 'human shield'. The 'female section' of Disobedienti went upfront to guard the masses as the human shield, should the police attack the protestors. I didn't quite understand what's the point in doing this, cause two years ago in Genoa I saw police and carabinieri attack and hospitalize men and women, young and the old, without much difference. And as I know things haven't changed much, if at all, since Genoa. There were also anarchists, who mostly remained at the back of the march.
Gita, Ana, Matej and myself tried to see the entire march, so we did a lot of running around. Meanwhile Bor and Predrag stayed at the back with the Black Bloc. The troubles started quite soon. First, we were very surprised, when we noticed a lot of anarchists rushing forward through the middle of the march. What is going on? There were angry reactions from the communist union members, when they spotted young anarchists. People grabbed eachothers hands to prevent the anarchists from mingling into their lines. But they were just passing by. There was a lot of yelling and cursing from both sides and we were quite surprised it didn't ended with a fight. Then came Predarag and Bor and reported what happened. The thing was that police tried to cut off Black Bloc from the rest of the march and appearently communists were on a side of the police. After some pushings around anarchists, being far outnumbered, retrieved. There was a lot of bitterness and anger in the air. The six of us chose not to be a part of it. All together we marched on trying to see as much of the demonstration as possible. We saw some Kurds with big pictures of Abdullah Ocallan, there were pacifists dressed in pink and a guy with a huge dummy of Silvio Berlusconi, which he was carrying on his back. BDummy was, quite correctly, dressed in prisoners clothes. It was a beautiful day and it seemed it will end like this.
Tension started raising as the march approached the Eur. There were 10.000 robocops waiting for us in the area, a true symbol of the 'free' society, in which we have been told we live in. Orwell would be impressed. Everyone marched straight through Eur. People put stickers and graphites on symbols of corporate power, such as McDonald's advertisment signs. Here and there you would see smashed windows on a gas pump. A graphite 'No blood for oil' testified why the windows were broken. Matej, Bor, Predrag, Gita, Ana and myself finally reached Eur as well. The sight was almost breathtaking. Eur is the area full of banks, huge office buildings, congress centres and the like. In the streets rectangular to the main road lurked the police and carabinieri. Behind them - Palazzo dei Congressi. There was a square in the middle of Eur, where people mostly marched through. Some decided to stick around. We were some of them, trying to guess what will happen next. Black Bloc was coming back together, which is always a beautiful sight.
Disobedienti also sticked around.
We sat down and decided to have a cigarette. It was the last one we smoked in peace. A group of anarchists attacked a bank with stones right behind our backs. The attack caused anger amongst other people, which once again led into screaming and pushing. Soon chaos erupted and many people fleed from the square. We also retrieved, but remained near enough, at the edge of the square. We tried to stick to the main road, cause it provided a relatively safe getaway should the police attack begin. Neither one of us namely had a gas mask or a helmet, which let us all too vulnerable in a possible clash with the police. Soon people massively started running down the main road but stopped after about one hundred meters. My friends and me returned quickly to see what happened. Police moved a bit closer to the square. Big deal. But at the same time, as we were looking around we saw that a clash with the police in Eur was a battle lost in advance. Police was completely controling the area, surrounding the squarre. Also, when I looked back I noticed that the unions had disappeared. There were only several hundreds of us left in Eur. OK, maybe a thousand. Not nearly enough, anyway.
Then the tear gas came and a lot of people retrieved. But only to come back up again. This happened several times. It was back and forth for at least 90 minutes or so. When all of the sudden the real police attack began. Tear gas shells were flying all over and confusion threw people into a massive stampedo. Gita, Ana, Matej, Predrag, Bor and myself barely managed to stick together since other people were pushing us out of their way. This time we ran about a kilometer down the road. When we stopped and looked back the police already set up a coridor and was approaching us slowly. We didn't understand what went wrong. Later, in the evening we saw it all on television. Disobedienti first symbolicly attacked the police trying to push them back, but it didn't work. After that everything is much unclear. It's hard to say if the police attacked the Black Bloc and the Disobedienti or vice versa. I saw one cop getting seriously wounded and a lot more of our comrades lying unconscious on the streat. There was some serious fighting which eventually led into a great police attack with tear gas that drove us away from Eur.
From this point everything went to hell. First, a group of people started throwing rocks at traffic policemen and yelled: "Assassini!" (For better understanding: at that time we were standing on the road bridge, while the traffic police - there were three of them - were situated on the road below.) In my personal opinion, this was very unjustifiable. I was in Genoa and I saw no traffic police there. Carlo Guliani was assasinated by carabinieri and not by traffic policemen. How are we going to win this fight, if we don't even know, who the real enemy is? After that a carabinieri car came driving from the other direction and drove straight through the crowd. People responded with massive anger and started throwing rocks into the passing car. A back window was broken. I think this was a deliberate provocation coming from the side of the police, which afterwards attacked even more.
We all ran down the road and came into a normal looking residential area. Street was full of cars and people were going about their daily business, that is shopping and drinking coffee with the neighbours. An old lady came out of her old Fiat and commended us for fighting against Berlusconi or something. She received a big applause. People were not afraid of us, nobody ran away from the 'vicious boys in black'. We jointly reached a subway station, but didn't get in. Now there were really only a couple of hundreds of us, maybe even less. Some anarchists started setting up a barricades to hold back the coming police. At the first sight one could see it will not work. Me and my friends decided to retrieve a bit more down the road. A plan was to move away from further fighting. There really was no point. Gita went to find her friend at the subway station and after she would return with him, we were set to go.
And then police attacked again. This time even more fiercly. I read in the newspaper the next day that one of the tear gas canisters went astray and flew inside the city bus through an opened window. Imagine that. Imagine small kids on that bus. Everyone was running away from the police and carabinieri. People who were drinking coffee in front of one bar turned over the tables in panic as they tried to rescue their heads. It was complete chaos. Bor, Matej, Ana, Predrag and me escaped into a small street and waited in front of one of the apartment blocks. Gita called and told us to get away as soon as possible. Later, when we met again, she said what happened. She just met with her friend when police came running. She couldn't escape down the road and had to retrieve into the subway station along with many others. Police pursued them, but they stopped at the end of the stairs. They caught some of our comrades and beat them half to death. The cops broke somebody's arm. The arm was literally hanging off of him and he was screaming in agony. The rest of the people were squizing on the train, but refused to go anywhere, cause they didn't want to leave their colleauges behind them. After a while things settled down and they were able to leave in peace.
Back to us five standing in front of a block. There was a huge discussion what to do next. Gita said we should get out of there, but nobody wanted to leave her behind. Bear in mind we had no clue what went on half a kilometer away from us. We observed people running all over the place but we didn't move anywhere. Predrag decided to go and see what's going on. He returned only a few seconds later yelling that four robocops are running behind him. What went on in the next seven minutes I have already described at the begining. We ran and ran until we finally made it to that coffee place. If we were safe or not, we didn't know. We sure didn't feel like it.
After half an hour we went on a city bus and drove to the centre of Rome. The streets were full of cops and the best thing we could do at the moment was to blend with the people. At the end we finally met Gita and the others. Nobody ate anything the whole day long, yet the only thing we really needed right now was a beer. A lot of beer. An hour later we were back to ourselves, laughing, joking and toasting to eachother. Toasting to be all in one piece.
Post scriptum
Altogether around 40 - 50 people were arrested that day in Rome, unknown number were wounded. The Berlusconi media reported once again about the 'outrages violence coming from the Black Bloc'. It was Genoa deja vu. Everything that went wrong that day was clearly atributed to anarchists. Well, they can talk whatever they want, but I was there and I know what I saw. But first, let me clarify one thing: the main stream media wants you to believe that Black Bloc is some sort of a violent organization consisted solely out of anarchists. This is a 'boogie man' theory, for Black Bloc does not exist as such. Black Bloc is merely a strategy, a tactic of demonstrating. It is based on direct actions and confrontations with the police. And not only anarchist participate in it.
Now to the point: true, our comrades within the Black Bloc made several strategic mistakes in the Eur area on that day. And I am not talking about that attack on a bank. To be honest, that doesn't move me at all. People have throughout the history attacked symbols of repression and slavery. I'm reffering to the clashes with the police that came afterwards. Black Bloc was far outnumbered and in no position to break through the police lines. We could have let that one slide. We do not need our comrades in jails and hospitals over nothing.
On the other hand, nothing I saw that day justifies the fascist police brutality that occured at the end of the demonstration. Under the pretense of 'chasing away the anarchists' police and carabinieri attacked and beat up everyone who came at the reach of their rubber sticks. But was any of that vandalism reported by the main stream media? Of course not.
– Erik Valencic
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