A-Infos (en) Italy, Umanita Nova #24/25 - Defending Occupied Spaces. Livorno: Teatrofficina Refugio Under Attack (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The occupation of the Teatrofficina Refugio in Livorno began in May 
2006, in a city where factories were closing, leaving hundreds of 
workers homeless. Unemployment and housing insecurity were rising, and 
an inflexible DS majority, out of touch with the needs of citizens and 
increasingly enamored with liberal ideology, was encouraging the 
sell-off of municipal real estate. A group of people, some from the CSA 
Godzilla collective, a key hub of the extra-institutional left at the 
time, decided to occupy an abandoned space to challenge the inaction of 
the local administration, counter growing real estate speculation, and 
create a meeting place for young people from the neighborhood and the city.

Earlier, thanks to a series of circumstances, the spaces of the former 
Giorgio Moriani gym, on the ground floor of the Palazzo del Refugio, 
located at number 8 of the eponymous railway station, had been 
identified. The former Refugio orphanage, later converted into a trades 
school and, after the Second World War, housing for the guards of the 
nearby Dominican prison, had passed into the hands of the Municipality 
in the early 2000s. Despite being, as it still is, inhabited, the 
Municipality intended to sell it to private individuals for unspecified 
neighborhood "redevelopment" projects.

The occupation of the space was an act of resistance against the risk of 
gentrification in the historic Venezia neighborhood and against the 
tertiarization of the city, which was abandoning its working-class and 
industrial past, creating a sense of social disorientation and political 
distrust unheard of in the city, despite the administration's attempts 
to swept under the rug of neighborhood redevelopment the grime of 
bitterness over the end of an era that had provided identity and income 
to many.

And thus the occupation. For several years, someone must have used the 
Scali del Refugio cellar as a storage facility: the wrecked vehicles and 
the broken bills were clear evidence of this; the animal carcasses, 
bricks, and rubble showed clear signs of years of neglect. After 
necessary removal, cleaning, and restoration, the Refugio's 
self-management initially created a People's Gym. Subsequently, 
preserving its identity as an occupied, anti-fascist, and self-managed 
space, the Teatrofficina Refugio became the cultural space it is today. 
A space deeply imprinted on the left's imagination, both within the city 
and beyond, respected and recognized for not having distorted its 
political identity, continuing to offer those who pass through it 
quality cultural and political programming and offerings, without ever 
interrupting collaboration and dialogue with like-minded political 
groups within the city and beyond.

The initial analysis of those who occupied the space at the time proved 
accurate in more than one respect. Over the years, the Venezia 
neighborhood has changed, both in terms of its retail offerings and its 
real estate market. Restaurants, bistros, pizzerias, and cocktail bars 
have gradually reopened the many vacant spaces, giving the neighborhood 
a non-identity made up of cruise ships, a tarmac plaza with unfinished 
construction, two churches, and a center for asylum seekers. Numerous 
business offices alternate with mostly subdivided homes, where rents are 
exorbitant and more and more Airbnbs are popping up between the 
intercoms. Other shops are virtually nonexistent. There's the city's 
most modern library, but no stationery or newsstand, only one grocery 
store, and the nearest pharmacy is at the edge of the next block.

Silent day and night on weekdays, except for the ships and the sounds of 
tour guides, the neighborhood only comes to life on weekends, but by 2 
a.m. at the latest, everything is usually quiet: it's the province. And 
even the pace of gentrification adapts to the province. Slower than that 
of large tourist cities, less aggressive in creating exclusionary 
dimensions, but still characterized by a profound sense of 
disorientation and loss of identity for those who have always lived in 
that neighborhood.

The decline in social media use during the pandemic has exacerbated and 
further fueled this phenomenon. The Facebook group of the Vivi La 
Venezia Neighborhood Committee, which doesn't organize initiatives, has 
no headquarters, and exists only online, has increasingly given space to 
those with a political interest in demonizing the Refugio social center 
and its activities, blaming it for the noise and the supposed "bad 
nightlife" of a neighborhood that fills to capacity on weekends, yet 
within which the Refugio represents a safe, welcoming, and free space. 
Its openings often help limit risky or inappropriate behavior, if only 
because the restroom is always accessible and mineral water is 
distributed free of charge.

Over time, this ongoing online shitstorm has been joined, partly by the 
neo-fascist right-wing government and partly by fomenting some of the 
building's reactionary tenants, by three complaints linked to the 
Brothers of Italy party. The latest of these was accompanied by a formal 
political attack on the space and the municipal administration, accused 
of tolerating this occupation for twenty years, which allegedly causes 
so much degradation and promotes illegal and dangerous activities.

The current Refugio collective believes that the manner of this highly 
instrumental attack, carried out with surreal, specious, and even trashy 
tones (the building was visited twice by the Fuori dal Coro crew), is 
typical of those who are incapable of opposing a system because they 
feed on that system in every cell. Therefore, by creating 
sensationalism, even when it isn't there, they hope to focus attention 
on something collateral, which has little in common with the goal they 
seek to achieve.

The approaching regional elections likely make it necessary to bring 
home some "meat," even for those who aren't running. You never know, 
sooner or later...

These are the goals of career politicians who only know how to use 
people and opportunities for their own ends. These are things that don't 
concern grassroots politicians.

On the other hand, it's true that at the national level, all occupied 
spaces are under attack. For what they do, but often also for what they 
represent in the imagination of so many people. For reasons that aren't 
always immediately political, perhaps, but which reflect that human, 
aggregative, and social dimension that only grassroots spaces can 
provide. Indeed, even in difficult times like the present, with the 
ongoing genocide in Gaza, they are once again becoming recognized points 
of reference and necessary drivers for organizing town meetings, 
marches, food drives, charity dinners, and much more.

And while we spare a thought for other occupied spaces threatened like, 
or even more so, the Teatrofficina Refugio in Livorno, we hope that 
participation in the local demonstration on September 20th and the 
initiatives supporting the general strike on September 22nd will see the 
streets filled.

A.S.

https://umanitanova.org/difendere-gli-spazi-occupati-livorno-teatrofficina-refugio-sotto-attacco/
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