A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #18-25 - Countering and sabotaging capital flows. Genoa on the streets and in the ports (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Three days full of initiatives in Genoa. We participated in two in 
particular, which despite their differences nevertheless highlight some 
common points. ---- The Ciemmona (https://ciemmona25.vado.li/), 
"Interplanetary Critical Mass" with abundant participation also from 
other countries, began last week with the setting up of the cycle-camp 
at CSOA Pinelli. ---- Like every year, thousands of people who choose to 
travel by bike meet for these three days of powerful reappropriation of 
city spaces usually clogged with cars, traffic, smog and accidents. ---- 
It is difficult to explain in a few words what a Critical Mass is: you 
could say that it is a small libertarian experiment in motion. You pedal 
together (but there are also rollerblades, skateboards, some run), 
helping each other in case of punctures and tiredness, sharing food, 
sweat and joy. Protecting each other at crossroads and self-managing any 
excess frustration. No one leads the crowd, no one decides the path, 
responsibility and care are distributed among everyone who participates.
It is a strong act of breaking the imposed rules, the "decorum" and 
rigidity of urban spaces; it is an explosion of imagination, 
reappropriation and lightness. It is a walking party, a demonstration of 
how our cities could be if they were planned for people and not for 
cars, if those who govern them decided to give priority to sociality 
rather than the production and consumption of goods.
Where until a few minutes before there was the stress of people forced 
to move by private car, suddenly there is music, colors, bikes of all 
kinds, people of different abilities, genders, classes, origins who meet 
to form a critical mass and pedal, for a few hours, in safety and 
company. For a few days the streets become people again, with no small 
amount of dismay and impatience of law enforcement agencies of various 
types.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of tense episodes with people who 
travel by car and motorbike, indicative of both a macho and irascible 
culture that we carry within us regardless of the mode chosen to travel, 
and of the total invisibility of those who use light mobility means: we 
explain that in the end those 10 minutes lost waiting for the Ciemmona 
to pass are like when there is traffic in a car, with the difference of 
the spectacle offered by the thousands of roller skates, skateboards, 
1-storey, 2-storey, horizontal, vertical, cargo bikes, etc. etc. But 
nothing, in the car-centric mentality to which we are socialized, bikes 
cannot be traffic. And therefore anger and aggression, instead of the 
daily stressed huffing and puffing of when you are stuck in a traffic 
jam. The reaction from the windows and from the people in the street is 
different: laughter, greetings, curiosity, photos and joyful shouts: in 
the end, when we get out of the car it is as if we all regain a bit of 
humanity.

The second initiative we participated in was the picket, which later 
became a procession, organized by the autonomous collective of port 
workers of Genoa (CALP).
On Friday, June 7, in fact, the port workers of Marseille communicated 
to those of Genoa that a ship of the Israeli naval company ZIM had 
docked at the port to load 14 tons of machine gun components destined 
for the Israeli army. The reaction of the French port workers was 
decisive: by refusing to load the weapons, they prevented the ammunition 
from arriving in Genoa. They then asked their Italian colleagues to 
verify that they had not been sent by land to be loaded from the Italian 
port during the technical stopover for fuel and food supplies.
This is not the first blockade of ships loaded with weapons, and it 
seems that the internationalist collaboration between port workers is 
working: the collaboration born after the start of the genocide between 
the French, Greek, Moroccan and Turkish groups is one of those grains of 
sand that can jam the war machine. And the logistics sector is once 
again revealed as a nerve center for capital, where the impact of 
desertion from the logic of war and internationalist cooperation can do 
more harm.

After a long picket at Varco Etiopia, about 200 people marched inside 
the port, with songs, chants and speeches. The ship, visible only from 
afar, is well protected by the Carabinieri and DIGOS. The CALPs explain 
that they have also moved at an institutional level so that Genoa stops 
being a port of call for all wars, but the responses to date are limited 
to trucks.

The common thread that unites the two initiatives concerns at least 2 
points. Solidarity with the Palestinian population and the possibility 
of countering sabotaging the flows of capital.
In fact, among the colors of the Critical Mass, the flags of Palestine 
and the solidarity chants stood out.

Furthermore, the logic of the critical mass that slows down the 
autocentric traffic designed for the race to productivity refers to the 
action of the dockers who jam a gear in the great machine of imperialist 
war.

A weekend that certainly recharged the energy of those who participated, 
something we felt we needed in these increasingly dark times of war and 
repression.

Thymo & badabing

https://umanitanova.org/contrastare-e-sabotare-i-flussi-del-capitale-genova-per-strada-e-nei-porti/
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