A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #46 - We are the saviors. (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Not because we are heroes, but because no one else will do it for us. 
Hope is a practice we must organize together. - Alessandro Ferretti ---- 
For two months now, Italy has been gripped by an unprecedented, 
mind-numbing heatwave, turning every day into a struggle for survival. 
Yet, instead of taking action to address this emergency, the government, 
boasting about sovereignty, has decided to put us all in debt by over 
twenty billion euros (almost EUR350 per person) to buy weapons from the 
United States, further sinking our country in order to further enrich 
the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
Despite this resounding slap in the face to the needs of all Italians, 
no reaction remotely commensurate with such madness has occurred, or 
will occur. Those who still bother to inform themselves no longer react 
to anything, like boxers stunned by their opponent's punches.

Aside from those so exhausted they're actually rooting for the 
meteorite, many console themselves with a deadly illusion that fuels 
incompetence and resignation: people are still doing too well, but 
sooner or later the abscess will burst, and those who are suffering will 
take to the streets and stop this disaster. Well, know this: it's not 
true. There's no such automatic mechanism. Psychology and history tell 
us the exact opposite: prolonged and increasing suffering doesn't 
generate active anger, but depression, forced adaptation, and social 
atomization in a potentially endless vicious cycle. The worse you feel, 
the less mental and physical energy you have to organize. There will be 
no spontaneous, life-saving rebellion; we have to earn our salvation, 
and the longer we wait to act, the more unlikely it becomes that a mass 
mobilization will take off, because dealing with worsening material 
conditions swallows up the time and energy needed to fight. The usual 
activists do what they can, but they're neither martyrs nor saints, much 
less superheroes.

The ruling elites have perfectly understood this dynamic and 
systematically exploit it. The paradox, entirely in their favor, is that 
spontaneous progressive rebellions succeed when living conditions are 
improving, as happened in 1789 or 1968. To maintain their dominance, 
those in power know they must not resolve crises and offer hope, but 
rather keep society constantly in decline. The cycle is vicious: worsen 
social conditions to the point of making survival a full-time job, 
distract public attention by channeling frustration into sterile, 
horizontal conflicts, and harshly repress anyone who persists in taking 
action with security decrees and the criminalization of dissent. All of 
this weakens those who resist, creating room for further intensification 
of exploitation and marginalization. In this theater, institutional 
opposition is not the solution, but simply the system's backstop. Those 
who sit in parliament or local government, party leaders, and officials 
have no real personal interest in promoting a fight against the 
concentrations of power that are destroying society, because it would 
only bring them risks and trouble. With a few laudable but very rare 
exceptions, they prefer to set up superficial oppositions, managing what 
little power they still have, waiting for the disaster to eventually 
wear down the governing majority so they can replace it, but continuing 
to implement the same policies and serve the interests of the rulers.

It's a movie we've seen too many times to pretend it will be any 
different this time, so let's stop fooling ourselves: no savior will 
come from above. Let's go vote, for goodness' sake, but in the knowledge 
that whoever takes office will continue undauntedly to manage the 
decline, to the greater glory of those who already have everything but 
want even more.

To escape this trap, we must first stop cultivating the pernicious 
attitude of criticizing those who oppose power but do not do so in the 
"right" way.

Even now, we still have to listen to people pontificating that "the left 
should care about workers instead of young people, LGBT rights, or 
migrants." This narrative only serves to sow division among those 
fighting to improve their conditions, promoting an absurd war between 
the least privileged over who should have priority. The fight must be 
one and clear: against the elites, against the super-rich, against those 
who profit from the devastation of our lives. The enemy is those who are 
transforming our existences into a dystopian nightmare, not the 
classmate or classmate who demands a further shred of dignity. Looking 
up, united against those at the top, is the only perspective that 
prevents us from tearing each other apart.

Still others justify their symbiosis with the couch by saying that all 
this action is pointless, only serves to make us feel bad. Yet, there 
has been a sign, and it's recent, that breaking the inertia brings 
concrete results. Millions of people took to the streets to stop the 
genocide in Gaza, despite repression, the complicit silence of 
institutions, and weariness: they pushed the issue onto the public 
agenda, shattered the dominant narrative, and forced politics to reckon 
with real mobilization. That ceasefire, however fragile, demonstrates 
that stubborn collective action can still break the inertia. But a flash 
in the pan can't save us: it must become a continuous and structured 
practice.

We must stop being passive spectators of our own shipwreck. Once we 
recognize the fundamental futility of voting, one way to find the 
strength to resist together is to rebuild the social fabric from the 
bottom up, in neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools.

There are countless avenues for action that can impact the 
hope-destroying machine here and now. We can fight to deconstruct our 
cities by planting trees and creating gardens, opposing speculative 
projects that consume land and raise temperatures. We can fight against 
gentrification and touristification, which drive up rents and increase 
evictions, defending the right to housing against rent-seeking. We can 
build alternative local information tools, describing the local 
mechanisms and consequences of organized decline and the experiences of 
resistance that seek to reverse it. Breaking the monopoly of narrative 
is essential to breaking out of isolation and demonstrating that we are 
not alone in our rebellion. We can defend public health by opposing the 
closure of services, participate in targeted boycott campaigns against 
companies complicit in environmental destruction or genocide, and work 
to liberate and restore abandoned public spaces, transforming them into 
places of aggregation and social interaction, alternatives to 
consumer-only venues. These aren't short-term nonsense: they're 
practical workshops where we learn to discuss concrete issues, 
collaborate, bring people together, and defend dignity.

In this context, universities and schools are crucial. They have been 
transformed into cogs in a system designed to promote an empty 
meritocracy of knowledge, disciplining, selecting, and marginalizing. 
However, the still-aware teachers who work within them still have the 
opportunity to foster spaces of open-mindedness and critique of the 
system, experimenting with alternative teaching methods and collective 
self-education. The toxic myth of excellence and merit, which only 
serves to mask the privileges of the wealthy and make those who cannot 
make it feel guilty, can be deconstructed by asserting rights and 
broadening horizons beyond individualism. Networks of joint action can 
be built between students, precarious researchers, workers, and 
teachers, restoring knowledge to its role in decoding reality, revealing 
the logic of those in power, and creating the conditions for change.

I know this reasoning is simplistic, and that there are enormous 
obstacles between saying "let's get organized" and actually doing it: 
fatigue, lack of time, skills that can't be improvised, internal 
conflicts, the fear of failure. I don't presume to offer a manual or a 
recipe that works for every neighborhood or workplace; this is an 
invitation to set out on a journey, not a detailed map of the route. The 
answers to how to do it, how to support each other, how not to get lost, 
can only be found by walking together: knots are unraveled by discussing 
them with others, not by mulling them over alone.

And let's be completely honest: no text will save us, including this 
one. These pages are only useful if they become a pretext-if you pass 
them on to a colleague, a neighbor, a classmate, and they become the 
occasion for that long-put-off conversation.

What moves us is not what we read: it's the face of someone who looks at 
you and asks: shall we do this together?

Hope is not a fairy tale told to us at the end of the day, but a 
practice we must build with commitment and organization. If we wait for 
pain to wake us, we will wake up in a nightmare with no escape. The only 
way out is to dedicate real, continuous, and persistent energy to daily 
political activity, now, before the window of opportunity closes 
completely. Let's start talking to those around us, let's organize 
ourselves in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.

Time is running out, continuing to wait for Godot would be pure suicide.

https://alternativalibertaria.org/
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