After two and a half years of propaganda, struggles, and initiatives,
the anarchists of Empoli, with their tenacity, have broken through thewall of silence-all the obstacles that the Democratic Party (PD)
municipal administration had put in place to stop the monument's
construction. Thus, on September 27th of this year, after having built
the monument ourselves, we were able to inaugurate it. It was an
intense, well-attended day, full of values, memory, relevance, and
emotion, for brotherhood and sisterhood, a ray of sunshine for the
future, in this unjust and dark world that we do not deserve. A crowded
day despite the absence of many comrades from the FAI of Tuscany, who
were busy protesting at the port of Livorno and at the anti-militarist
demonstration in La Spezia to block the arms trade, government policies,
and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The monument was placed on Via delle Fiascaie (named after the
glass-coating workers), in the heart of the city's busy working life,
where the furnaces and chimneys of the Taddei glassworks once stood.
Hundreds of workers, along with a strong presence of revolutionary and
anti-fascist trade unionists, worked here.
Here, on March 8, 1944, 26 of them, who had participated in a strike
against the war and the fascist government, along with 29 other Empoli
citizens, were arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps. The
survivors later became firsthand witnesses to atrocities that should
never have happened again, and which, sadly, we witness today.
A few meters away from Via delle Fiascaie, on Campaccio, now Piazza
della Vittoria, a rally by the anarchist Errico Malatesta was held in
1921. It was an exhilarating moment for workers and the masses, in a
packed square. Despite the rally having been announced only the evening
before, all activities stopped to listen to the great orator and
revolutionary.
Also worthy of note is the rally by the anarchist Pietro Gori and the
incessant applause he received after his speech, so much so that when he
stepped down from his table, he was picked up and carried around the square.
We have touched on these episodes to understand the social climate, the
conflict, and the environment in which Oreste grew up, joining at a very
young age the anarchist groups present in the Empoli area, which formed
within the section of the Workers' International, of Bakuninian,
anti-authoritarian origin. Ristori joined their struggles, as well as
those of the libertarian revolutionary union, an important component
also present in the first Empoli labor union alongside the railway
workers' union.
Remo Scappini recalled that, alongside the socialist propaganda spread
by the weekly Vita Nova, the anarchists exerted great influence through
their struggles and the anarchist newspaper Umanità Nova.
A monument to remember Oreste Ristori, an anarchist militant and a
leading figure in anarchism between the 19th and 20th centuries.
First in Empoli, then in political exile in Latin America, where he
became a legend, in Spain during the 1936 revolution, in France, and
again in Italy, against fascism. Arrested for inciting class hatred, he
was imprisoned in the Murate prison in Florence. On December 2, 1943, he
was taken from the walls by fascists from the Carità gang and brutally
executed, along with four other comrades, at the Cascine shooting range
in retaliation for the killing by the Gappisti of Colonel Gino Gobbi, a
fascist torturer responsible for serious crimes against his opponents.
Oreste was a comrade of the people, serving the least, without
hierarchies, among the first in battle, a symbol of rare political
coherence, lived to the point of ultimate sacrifice. He never renounced
his ideas, paying the price of freedom with his own life, and now he
finally finds public recognition in his city, a clear message for new
generations: memory is not archived, it is protected, it is passed on in
times of revisionism and denial, with open eyes, a critical spirit, and
learning. As he would have done.
The monument: a symbol of political and economic expatriation, a boat
with sails in the wind, but also a symbol of a journey toward a more
just and humane future society. A boat sailing full steam ahead with an
evocative name: LIBERTARIA, to commemorate the ideals, commitment,
consistency, and struggles of those who came before us, of those
champions of a liberated world, like Oreste Ristori.
At the bow of the boat is the Torch of Anarchy, a bearer of light, which
allowed Oreste to cross the entire earth and its seas, demonstrating
that his homeland was the entire world.
The boat unwittingly leads us to the small ships of the flotilla, now
pushing forward to deliver humanitarian aid to a people suffering
genocide, a war crime supported by the US and its European vassals, to
open a humanitarian channel against the Israeli government's closures,
through direct grassroots action.
But why remember Oreste Ristori? The sense of living a free, rebellious,
and supportive life, a characteristic, participatory, and cosmopolitan
trait, part of the guiding star of these "old" libertarian militants.
Direct and independent action, the aspiration not to delegate the
solution to one's problems to others, the hope for a better, free, and
egalitarian world, are the sentiments that move anarchists like Ristori,
but also the source of new militants.
Nothing more modern, even ultramodern, than the desire to be masters of
one's own destiny, reminding us all that history does not forgive those
who forget it!
Paolo Becherini
Luigi Proietti
The text of the epigraph:
At dawn on December 2, 1943, in Florence, along with four other
comrades, barbarously murdered by the fascists, ORESTE RISTORI fell. For
the love of freedom and equality, after years of struggle and
persecution, he was among the first to respond to the call of the
international anti-fascist movement. His comrades, to the eternal infamy
of their executioners, placed this marble statue as an example to young
people for future battles for human emancipation. Empoli, December 2,
2023. The anarchist, communist, feminist movement, the quarrymen's
league, the anti-fascist cultural associations, the world of free thought.
https://umanitanova.org/la-memoria-scolpita-empoliun-monumento-a-oreste-ristori/
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