The Lucha y Siesta Women's House is a space for feminist and
transfeminist relationships in which intersectional gender and commoning
policies are developed, experimented and practiced. It has been active
since 8 March 2008 in the VII Municipality of Rome, in the south-eastern
outskirts of the city, as an anti-violence centre, a shelter for women
on the path to escape from violence, a cultural hub, a place for
discussion and collective growth. ---- A welcoming house ---- Since its
inception, the Lucha y Siesta Women's House has become a point of
reference for combating gender violence. This same objective is the
reason why the community was formed which restored a building abandoned
for decades in the working-class neighborhood of Quadraro: the women who
crossed the gate in via Lucio Sestio 10 that day came from the housing
movement, from feminism, from the fight against violence and they
understood that the autonomy of women and their choices was being broken
precisely at the intersection of these instances. When it came time to
leave home to escape the violent situation, the alternatives - homes,
places to live - were woefully insufficient.
Lucha y Siesta was born for this, this is why it exists 16 years later,
and this is why it is an indispensable place: gender violence is
transversal, systemic, structural and stratified, the reception places
are still terribly insufficient as are the places, material and
symbolic, to practice possible and necessary alternatives.
Our project is one of the few in this city to promote feminist and
transfeminist culture and to make up for, albeit minimally, the lack of
beds in shelter homes for people escaping violence, which in Rome should
be at least 350.
Gender violence is a complex phenomenon that requires transversal
strategies; sexual and gender stereotypes produce a rigid and distorted
perception of reality, based on prejudices that force people into narrow
categories of what is acceptable and what is not. The iceberg of
violence shows the existence of a causal relationship between
stereotypes, microsexism, sexist language, humiliation, abuse up to
feminicide which constitutes the emerging tip of a much larger and
mostly hidden phenomenon. Starting from this awareness, the Casa delle
Donne Lucha y Siesta plans and implements awareness, education, training
and self-training activities from the bottom up to sexual affectivity,
in particular aimed at younger people, also with projects within
schools, to trigger reflections on the gender issue.
Lucha is...
The management assembly, based on horizontal criteria, functions as a
link between the many projects that run through the House. Lucha y
Siesta is: anti-violence help desk, autonomy and social inclusion
projects for women victims of violence, training for operators and
cultural mediators specialized in welcoming migrant women seeking asylum
and refuge, raising awareness and combating gender stereotypes through
the languages of cinema and theatre, toy library open to children and
young people from the neighborhood and to the group of minors welcomed
in the Home, accompaniment and support for parenting, singing, theatre,
sewing, yoga, Italian and foreign language courses, library and study
room, hub of circular economy outside the capitalist logic, tailoring
workshop to create work and self-income, exchange space for those who
want to take or bring something, garden and space open to the territory,
moments of meeting and political space for care, design of self-produced
games, games in the open air, vegetable garden...
All of this is inspired by a feeling and a practice through which we
construct the intersectional "we" of transfeminism; an us that includes
women, trans people, non-binary, intersex, queer, lesbian, bisexual,
gay, polyamorous, asexual, aromantic people and anyone who, even if they
do not recognize themselves in these words, escapes the imposed binary
and heterosexual norm.
Self-government, dialogue and radicalism
Our Declaration of Self-Governance is the result of collective and
cooperative work; during the participatory planning workshops, held
between September 2020 and April 2022, a large community developed and
wrote it following two directions: recognizing the experience
accumulated over the years of Lucha y Siesta's life and relaunching our
political practice, imagining new trajectories and connections.
This declaration is located in our here and now and at the same time
takes meaning from our broader horizon, open to different times and
places, always oriented towards the transformation of what exists. Lucha
transfeminist common good is a process in itself, its community is
defined around continuously evolving practices and knowledge. Based on
community, dynamic life, prefigurative politics and everyday utopia,
Lucha y Siesta is therefore situated in the changing context of the
present without ceasing to imagine and generate horizons.
In this sense, our political action is also expressed through
interlocution and confrontation, even conflictual, with the
institutions, keeping together the levels of dialogue and radicalism.
During the 16 years of new life for the property, there have been
several attacks by the institutions. To cite the most recent facts, in
2019 the second complaint for occupation and the request for eviction
arrived from ATAC, a municipal transport company, therefore 51% owned by
the Municipality, and owner of the building. ATAC's objective was in
fact to put all the properties it owned up for auction to cover its
serious budget deficits, without making a difference between those
actually still unused and those freed from abandonment. There was no
support from the Municipality, then led by Raggi, who in the name of
legality disregarded the value of the Lucha y siesta experience.
At that point, the Resolution on Common Goods having recently been
passed by the Regional Council, a citizen campaign was launched, "Lucha
to the city", which aimed at the recognition of the Lucha y Siesta
Women's House as a Common Good, and which involved the Region in public
auction. After several unsuccessful auctions, on August 5, 2021, the
property was purchased by the Region and during the following year an
agreement was written, passed in September 2022, which grants the
building to the association, recognizing its social and cultural value.
While to date the employment trial is over and our association has been
acquitted, the Region, a few months after the change of government from
Zingaretti to Rocca, has now decided to withdraw the agreement and put
out a tender (therefore vacate) the stable, once again putting the
House's experience at risk.
We believe these political choices are in contradiction with the
declarations of the institutions against feminicides, which in this way
justify gender violence on a narrative and cultural level. Our request
is that public ownership be maintained and that the social and political
function of the House be recognized and enhanced.
Intersecting struggles
It is necessary to speak out and respond in a militant manner to the
ideological offensive of the pro-life movement and the current
government. In 2016 we were among the founders of Non Una Di Meno with
the Rome Node. The feminist and transfeminist movement, together with
the ecological and anti-racist movement, are the bearers of the three
global demands of this century, which are declaring that this system
does not work. Through dialogue and mutual recognition it is possible
for these movements to intersect with the class movement on the level of
anti-capitalism, in an intersectional perspective that could unite all
struggles against oppression.
The grassroots unions have already called, as in the last 8 years, the
strike on March 8th. The CGIL, especially after the large participation
in the demonstration against gender violence called by Non Una Di Meno
on November 25th, is discussing whether to join or not. It's time for a
change to be triggered, recognizing that the strike is also a tool to
affirm the gender issue.
We thank our comrades Viola and Simona, activists of the Casa delle
Donne Lucha y Siesta.
To learn about Lucha activities: https://luchaysiesta.org .
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
transfeminist relationships in which intersectional gender and commoning
policies are developed, experimented and practiced. It has been active
since 8 March 2008 in the VII Municipality of Rome, in the south-eastern
outskirts of the city, as an anti-violence centre, a shelter for women
on the path to escape from violence, a cultural hub, a place for
discussion and collective growth. ---- A welcoming house ---- Since its
inception, the Lucha y Siesta Women's House has become a point of
reference for combating gender violence. This same objective is the
reason why the community was formed which restored a building abandoned
for decades in the working-class neighborhood of Quadraro: the women who
crossed the gate in via Lucio Sestio 10 that day came from the housing
movement, from feminism, from the fight against violence and they
understood that the autonomy of women and their choices was being broken
precisely at the intersection of these instances. When it came time to
leave home to escape the violent situation, the alternatives - homes,
places to live - were woefully insufficient.
Lucha y Siesta was born for this, this is why it exists 16 years later,
and this is why it is an indispensable place: gender violence is
transversal, systemic, structural and stratified, the reception places
are still terribly insufficient as are the places, material and
symbolic, to practice possible and necessary alternatives.
Our project is one of the few in this city to promote feminist and
transfeminist culture and to make up for, albeit minimally, the lack of
beds in shelter homes for people escaping violence, which in Rome should
be at least 350.
Gender violence is a complex phenomenon that requires transversal
strategies; sexual and gender stereotypes produce a rigid and distorted
perception of reality, based on prejudices that force people into narrow
categories of what is acceptable and what is not. The iceberg of
violence shows the existence of a causal relationship between
stereotypes, microsexism, sexist language, humiliation, abuse up to
feminicide which constitutes the emerging tip of a much larger and
mostly hidden phenomenon. Starting from this awareness, the Casa delle
Donne Lucha y Siesta plans and implements awareness, education, training
and self-training activities from the bottom up to sexual affectivity,
in particular aimed at younger people, also with projects within
schools, to trigger reflections on the gender issue.
Lucha is...
The management assembly, based on horizontal criteria, functions as a
link between the many projects that run through the House. Lucha y
Siesta is: anti-violence help desk, autonomy and social inclusion
projects for women victims of violence, training for operators and
cultural mediators specialized in welcoming migrant women seeking asylum
and refuge, raising awareness and combating gender stereotypes through
the languages of cinema and theatre, toy library open to children and
young people from the neighborhood and to the group of minors welcomed
in the Home, accompaniment and support for parenting, singing, theatre,
sewing, yoga, Italian and foreign language courses, library and study
room, hub of circular economy outside the capitalist logic, tailoring
workshop to create work and self-income, exchange space for those who
want to take or bring something, garden and space open to the territory,
moments of meeting and political space for care, design of self-produced
games, games in the open air, vegetable garden...
All of this is inspired by a feeling and a practice through which we
construct the intersectional "we" of transfeminism; an us that includes
women, trans people, non-binary, intersex, queer, lesbian, bisexual,
gay, polyamorous, asexual, aromantic people and anyone who, even if they
do not recognize themselves in these words, escapes the imposed binary
and heterosexual norm.
Self-government, dialogue and radicalism
Our Declaration of Self-Governance is the result of collective and
cooperative work; during the participatory planning workshops, held
between September 2020 and April 2022, a large community developed and
wrote it following two directions: recognizing the experience
accumulated over the years of Lucha y Siesta's life and relaunching our
political practice, imagining new trajectories and connections.
This declaration is located in our here and now and at the same time
takes meaning from our broader horizon, open to different times and
places, always oriented towards the transformation of what exists. Lucha
transfeminist common good is a process in itself, its community is
defined around continuously evolving practices and knowledge. Based on
community, dynamic life, prefigurative politics and everyday utopia,
Lucha y Siesta is therefore situated in the changing context of the
present without ceasing to imagine and generate horizons.
In this sense, our political action is also expressed through
interlocution and confrontation, even conflictual, with the
institutions, keeping together the levels of dialogue and radicalism.
During the 16 years of new life for the property, there have been
several attacks by the institutions. To cite the most recent facts, in
2019 the second complaint for occupation and the request for eviction
arrived from ATAC, a municipal transport company, therefore 51% owned by
the Municipality, and owner of the building. ATAC's objective was in
fact to put all the properties it owned up for auction to cover its
serious budget deficits, without making a difference between those
actually still unused and those freed from abandonment. There was no
support from the Municipality, then led by Raggi, who in the name of
legality disregarded the value of the Lucha y siesta experience.
At that point, the Resolution on Common Goods having recently been
passed by the Regional Council, a citizen campaign was launched, "Lucha
to the city", which aimed at the recognition of the Lucha y Siesta
Women's House as a Common Good, and which involved the Region in public
auction. After several unsuccessful auctions, on August 5, 2021, the
property was purchased by the Region and during the following year an
agreement was written, passed in September 2022, which grants the
building to the association, recognizing its social and cultural value.
While to date the employment trial is over and our association has been
acquitted, the Region, a few months after the change of government from
Zingaretti to Rocca, has now decided to withdraw the agreement and put
out a tender (therefore vacate) the stable, once again putting the
House's experience at risk.
We believe these political choices are in contradiction with the
declarations of the institutions against feminicides, which in this way
justify gender violence on a narrative and cultural level. Our request
is that public ownership be maintained and that the social and political
function of the House be recognized and enhanced.
Intersecting struggles
It is necessary to speak out and respond in a militant manner to the
ideological offensive of the pro-life movement and the current
government. In 2016 we were among the founders of Non Una Di Meno with
the Rome Node. The feminist and transfeminist movement, together with
the ecological and anti-racist movement, are the bearers of the three
global demands of this century, which are declaring that this system
does not work. Through dialogue and mutual recognition it is possible
for these movements to intersect with the class movement on the level of
anti-capitalism, in an intersectional perspective that could unite all
struggles against oppression.
The grassroots unions have already called, as in the last 8 years, the
strike on March 8th. The CGIL, especially after the large participation
in the demonstration against gender violence called by Non Una Di Meno
on November 25th, is discussing whether to join or not. It's time for a
change to be triggered, recognizing that the strike is also a tool to
affirm the gender issue.
We thank our comrades Viola and Simona, activists of the Casa delle
Donne Lucha y Siesta.
To learn about Lucha activities: https://luchaysiesta.org .
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten