A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #13-26 - Bandits - Damned Work 2. We'll Make Ragù with Scab Meat (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Capitalism changes, mutates, transforms, colonizes Mars, designs 
androids, and catapults us into science fiction, but the poor remain 
(even though someone had abolished poverty by law...), exploited, and 
oppressed. ---- Songs have always accompanied struggles, on strikes, on 
picket lines, in the countryside. Songs help us remember the names of 
those who stood tall, those who never bowed their heads, those who died 
for their rights and those of all. May 1st remains the celebration of 
the exploited, a day to dance and sing in anticipation of 364 days of 
struggle.

1 DUAP - HERO OF NOTHING
2 PAT ATHO - THE MURDER OF ABD EL SALAM
3 RIDERZ WITH ATTITUDE - WORKING CLASS RAP

1 DUAP - HERO OF NOTHING

Duap's proletarian rock reinvigorated the sound of Italian Oi! in the 
late '90s. They played for just a few years, producing important songs 
for the "suburban" kids and the rebels: "On those walls black writings / 
'Punks and skins still together'" goes "Storie di quartiere." Their 
streetpunk didn't flaunt political or ideological content, but that 
didn't mean their lyrics were uninhibited. Like much of Oi!, their 
lyrics recount the daily lives of working-class neighborhoods-certainly 
the factory and the workplace, but also the anxieties, frustrations, 
pastimes, and urges of those who live in the suburbs. "No one will 
notice anymore / if you're dead or alive, / every day you fight / to 
stay standing." Thus begins "Eroe di nulla," a song from their latest 
and most mature album "Solo per noi," easily recognizable by its 
compact, lively sound, just the right amount of raw. The cover features 
Flavio Costantini's work "Parigi 7 aprile 1912, I banditi tragici," 
which immortalizes the arrest of Raymond Callemin and Pierre 
Jourdain-known as Raymond la Science and Imbart-anarchists from the 
Banda Bonnot. Duap's name originally stood for "Distribuzione Unitaria 
Anarco-Proletaria," but since it referred more to a project than a band, 
and being a bit heavy... the song "Duri a perdere" became the perfect 
way to keep the old acronym and sum up their attitude. If punk had 
plenty of anger to vent, Oi! It's a punk song steeped in hate: "Eight 
hours of swearing / you think in vain about your future / you're locked 
in this life / they don't even let you breathe." The heroes described in 
the song are actually just ordinary people, those who go to work every 
day, to (sur)vive: "Hero of nothing! / hero of eight hours / hero of 
nothing! / working hands / hero of nothing! / hair always short / hero 
of nothing! / ready for victory!" A simple refrain perhaps, but one that 
encompasses the materiality of their exploitation (the calluses on their 
hands), their subcultural affiliation (shaved head: "...now you have a 
style: / skinhead!") and a hint of hope given by the struggle. "Hero of 
nothing" also seems to recall, with a war metaphor, those "fallen at 
work", victims of a system of exploitation that reaps - even in Italy 
alone - a daily bloodbath, a true silent war. "I don't want any medals / 
but I want my dignity back!" It certainly won't be a consoling text; 
there's no happy ending. "Only for Us" is disillusioned but never 
resigned: "I don't want your greeting / I don't want your money / I 
don't want any medals / I don't want to obey anymore."

2 PAT ATHO - THE MURDER OF ABD EL SALAM

Abd Elsalam Ahmed Eldanf (*) was crushed by a truck that crashed into 
the union picket line guarding the gates of the logistics company during 
a dispute on the night of September 14, 2016. He worked as a laborer at 
the GLS warehouse in Piacenza, was 53 years old, a father of five, and 
originally from Egypt, where he taught. That night, the USB union picket 
blocked the gates of the logistics hub during negotiations over the 
respect of temporary workers' contracts. Abd El Salam participated 
despite having a permanent contract. He dies, another of his colleagues 
is injured by a strikebreaker who, driving a heavy vehicle, literally 
crushes workers and their rights. "The Murder of Abd El Salam" is one of 
a handful of songs that recall the worker and his story, written by Pat 
Atho on his second solo album. "He's stone dead / they lied / he died of 
pain / the doctor said so. How he died / they ran him under / blind 
destiny / a strikebreaker's van." Path hails from the punk scene of the 
"filthy province" of Lazio, among whose most incisive bands he's been a 
part are Automatica Aggregazione and Gli Ultimi. In his solo project, he 
dusts off Italian and overseas folk traditions, using his harmonica and 
an old-school six-string guitar to sing with the same streetwise 
authenticity of punk. What matters is having stories to tell, and Abd El 
Salam's is one of them: "Who killed him? You killed him / Who killed 
him? The boss killed Abd El." The piece is accompanied by a few lines 
from the author that retrace the dynamics of the strike picket in 
Piacenza and the worker's death: "It's a homicide, whether intentional 
or negligent is only important in the courts: the message was clear, for 
those with ears to hear. Violence is once again returning throughout the 
country at strike sites, a reminder of a squadrism that seemed to be 
long gone. Abd El Salam is neither a symbol nor a martyr. Abd El Salam 
is an Egyptian professor, in Italy a logistics worker, killed in the 
race for profit." "The company has the right / the company has the power 
/ to take the life / of a man if it believes it." The song flows quickly 
despite the heavy narrative, a handful of verses reiterating that no one 
should die at work, for work, or on work, "...I wish I could tell you / 
that the fight will be hard. / But just tell me / how Christ died / I 
want to know / why he died."

(*) His name is spelled differently; since I don't know which is 
correct, it's always been reported as written in the source.

3 RIDERZ WITH ATTITUDE - WORKING CLASS RAP

In a Western world where the dominant power had made trap its perfect 
cultural expression (a branch of rap that took the gangsta urge to 
achieve money, power, and women by any means and method to the extreme), 
the working class's trapped response could only come from the "new 
slaves." Riderz With Attitude was born in Turin, a gang of riders who 
rap about and animate their struggles. The idea and political use of 
trap music in an anti-capitalist vein originated among those who were 
the first to work within the framework of the algorithm, which 
established unprecedented forms of control and exploitation. It was 
around 2018 that the mobilizations of new delivery workers began in 
Italy, employed by digital capitalist giants who based their profits on 
an invisible neo-gangmaster system, on extreme flexibility, speculating 
in defiance of any right, law, or convention. "Working Class Rap" is 
certainly one of their most iconic songs: "Pump this shit, everything 
trembles, working class rap / push it harder through the streets, I want 
a thousand gangs / 66-pound bottles, fuck your Moet / money doesn't 
smell / but your community center only needs a private room." A fresh 
and fast-paced lyrics that distances itself from posse rap, slogans, and 
"classic" storytelling to become more fluid and disjointed: "Every day 
is a gamble like I'm playing dice / I wear my Quechua raincoat even if 
it's thirty degrees / we ride all day like we were nomads / guess who 
fucks with the riders? / exactly: nobody." The precariousness and 
working conditions of the riders also emerge in lines like "From Porta 
Palazzo (keep it real) / I travel nine kilometers to deliver a happy 
meal (oh shit)" or "Secondary roads like rats in the sewers / here we 
are like the leaves on the trees in autumn," which depict working 
conditions very different from those of industrial capitalism. The name 
RWA obviously recalls that of the seminal American group NWA (Niggaz Wit 
Attitudes), which laid the foundations of a certain type of rap. It is 
interesting that the Turin group replaced the racial theme with the "R": 
"you don't know the hard work but you talk about classes / everything is 
right in theory if you don't put it into practice". The song is 
introduced by a rather impressive manifesto: "Working Class Rap isn't 
just a song, it's a style. A way to overturn the usual content of trap, 
return to the streets and try to overturn a reality that's too narrow. 
Ostentation gives way to insubordination, gang rage to class hatred: 
Gucci becomes Kalenji, necklaces become chains, the private room a 
square covered with a carpet of 66-size bowls. It will never be 
mainstream and doesn't want to be; the goal is to tell and accompany 
lazy shifts, messy strikes, and intolerant attitudes, pumping from a 
cargo tank and hoping for 1,000 'gvngs'." RWA are also a fairly rare 
example in Italy of a crew in which each member raps in their own 
language (thanks to subtitles or translations on YouTube, you can 
understand a lot); some of them are Fara, 3P, Makita, Karma, and Shiro. 
"And I won't stop in the cold / even if it's minus seven / we're really 
out there / not like your rappers" says "Class Hatred", "under the rain 
if it rains, to hell under the sun" had, alas, already sung the working 
class... As if it were a modern "CNN of the exploited", in the story of 
their work we encounter a vocabulary typical of the labor movement: "Do 
you want some sauce? We'll even bring you BBQ sauce / with the scab meat 
we make ragù!" (from "Nomadi").

En.Ri-ot

https://umanitanova.org/note-bandite-maledetto-lavoro-2-con-la-carne-di-crumiro-ci-faremo-del-ragu/
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