A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: WHY OPPOSE THE BRIDGE - Pippo Ponte (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The bridge is colonialism. ---- As a work functional exclusively to the 
economic and political interests of the dominant classes of the North 
and their local accomplices, the Strait Bridge represents a colonialist 
operation. All the "theories" wasted in its support (take-off of the 
economy, connecting Sicily to Europe, tens of thousands of jobs...) are 
pure propaganda aimed at hiding the true aim of the operation: to 
deceive the Sicilians and Calabrians, distribute economic resources to 
the national elites and the industrial apparatuses involved, finance 
politics, produce electoral consensus for Salvini and his circle. The 
crossing of the Strait is only a pretext, but the price of this pretext 
will be very expensive (and in part already is) for the populations 
involved. The operation is colonialist because it aims to accentuate the 
dependence of the two regions on the rich North, exacerbates their 
subordination and widens the imbalance while simultaneously trying to 
annihilate the southern masses, especially their capacity for rebellion.

The bridge is mafia..

Someone we don't like very much in one of his sermons said that this 
bridge unites two gangs and not two coasts. The mafia's interest in the 
Strait Bridge project is not new and has even entered into an 
international investigation concerning the Sicilian-Canadian mafia. The 
supporters of the work pretend not to know that there are no activities 
in the Messina or Reggio area in the construction field that are not 
influenced by the mafia or the 'Ndrangheta. By conditioned we mean both 
infiltrated and directly traced back, through frontmen and money 
laundering, to the families dominating the two provinces and the two 
regions. Contracts, subcontracts, related industries, earthmoving, 
transport, land under expropriation, all bear the mafia trademark; part 
of the billions of the bridge will rain towards this system, also well 
rooted in the business world in general, in that of politics and public 
administration, in that of the media, even before the work sees the 
light (if it ever sees it), since these are activities based on land, 
the only ones that can be built in a handful of months..

The bridge is destruction. .

Environments, communities, lives, landscapes, ecological balances are 
under attack by an arrogant and destructive liberalism, even before it 
is constructive. The devastation that the construction sites will cause 
to a vast territory which, from the center of Messina will extend over a 
radius of tens of kilometers, will be irreversible; it will bury fields 
and neighborhoods, beaches and waterways under mountains of concrete, 
transforming one of the most important sites in the Strait area into a 
cemetery of pylons, junctions, yards, shacks; its effects will hit the 
Messina and Reggio area with a force greater than that of the 1908 
earthquake.

The bridge is a distraction. .

This clumsy operation serves to distance the Sicilian-Calabrian 
populations from the perception of their real problems, relegating them 
to a subordinate function to the "great work"; if not worse, placing 
their solution as an automatic consequence of the presence of the 
Bridge, thus, by magic. Without the Bridge none of the primary needs of 
the area will therefore be able to be satisfied. The narrative is not 
only toxic, it is not only false, but it is blackmail. .

Oppose. .

Opposing the mafia, colonialism, capitalist devastation, the poison of 
propaganda, means opposing the Strait Bridge. It means defending the 
Sicilian and Calabrian territory, defending and reclaiming the Sicilian 
insularity and the delicate geological and ecological balances of the 
Strait area. It means defending the sea, the air, the land and the 
health of the inhabitants. .

Opposing the Bridge is an anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist gesture; 
is to demand - instead of the Bridge - immediate interventions to secure 
the territory from seismic and geological risk, the latter accentuated 
by climate change, drought, fires, depopulation of towns and 
countryside, in turn at the origin of a spiral of unprecedented social 
desertification; it is to demand infrastructures with low or no 
environmental impact for the connections of the mountain villages, and 
of the entire island with efficient and finally modern railways; require 
the crossing of the Strait with a fleet of modern, fast ferry ships, 
equipped to accommodate trains suitable for short and essential 
maneuvers (projects that have existed for years in RFI's drawers but 
deliberately blocked); demand radical interventions on water for the 
countryside, cities and towns. All objectives capable of causing 
virtuous cycles of social, employment and collective well-being 
revitalisation, a brake on emigration, and opportunities for those who 
have had to leave to return. .

The fight against the Bridge is yet another opportunity offered to 
Sicilians to develop practices of movement autonomy, of push from below, 
which is also an autonomist claim, an affirmation of the desire for 
self-government of the territory, of independence understood as the 
desire to overturn the colonialist logic through a process of liberation 
capable of separating the interests of the people who suffer and suffer 
every type of exploitation and humiliation, from those of the 
bourgeoisie, mafia or "secular" who, in the territories concerned, or 
from the heights of capitalist-colonialist domination, demand to be able 
to continue to decide the fate of the popular masses and the urban and 
social environments in which they live. .

This is a long process, to be addressed in synergy with the paths 
initiated some time ago against the militarization of territories, 
against the harmful effects of industrialization, against the 
privatization of public water, against the transformation of Sicily into 
an energy hub for multinationals and the rich areas of Northern Italy 
and Europe, against the dismantling of healthcare and essential 
services, against segregationist and murderous policies towards migrant 
people. The unity of the many against for a common objective: building 
the social revolution in Sicily and in the South day by day.

Pippo Gurrieri

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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