The Military Question ---- The 164 years of annexation of Sicily to the
Italian State have taught us that the manu militari has never failed,both when it was necessary to occupy territories in revolt, to quell
rebellions, to fight banditry (that is, the effect and never the cause
of a ruthless colonization), and when cannon fodder was needed for the
wars of the industrial bourgeoisie, or when the island had to be sold
off to imperialist interests. By virtue of its strategic position in the
center of the Mediterranean, Sicily is an armed island projected
offensively towards Eastern Europe and towards all the areas in conflict
in the so-called enlarged Mediterranean, where, that is, the energy and
political interests of the Italian State and its allies-masters USA-NATO
reside.
Militarism represents a serious mortgage to any instance of emancipation
of the Sicilian people and is the main obstacle to be overcome if we
want to pave the way for liberation from the economic, social, cultural
and psychological slavery of the subaltern classes.
The Energy Question
Energy exploitation is one of the most intricate knots of the colonial
exploitation of the island. Hub of extraction and especially of the
refining of crude oil, the territory and the sea are also subject to
energy servitude given by the passage of oil and gas pipelines coming
from North Africa; the rural areas are occupied by extensive wind farms
and photovoltaic plants, which are extending along the coast and the
marine strip; agriculture is therefore marginalized and the dependence
on energy multinationals is deepening more and more.
An extractivism that has brought huge profits to the masters of energy
and the mafia, unloading pollution, false promises of development,
enormous health problems, subordination on the island.
Sicily must free itself from energy slavery, become master of its own
sources, abandon the world of fossil fuels, make alternative energy a
factor of self-government and social emancipation.
The Mafia
The existence of the Mafia is inseparable from that of capital and the
State; although often in conflict with them, the Mafia power has
actually played a functional role for the dominant classes by imposing a
culture of fear and obedience among the weaker social classes, but
showing a great capacity to adapt to the challenges of the economy,
finance, new technologies, as a true holding, without ceasing to
challenge (or share) the State's monopoly on violence in the territories
under its control.
For this reason, the fight against the Mafia cannot be entrusted to law
enforcement, priests, magistrates. If it is not an integral part of a
process of liberation from the State and capitalism, and all their
ramifications, it is destined to become an insidious mystification
Development
The idea of a new social life must flourish from the ashes of toxic
concepts such as Development, Growth, Modernity through which
colonialist and imperialist paradigms have been imposed with their
corollary of exploitation, environmental devastation, cultural
pollution, militarization and death. Robbery industrialization and all
its encroachments into areas such as education, culture, tourism must be
fought and defeated. The technological myth that hides new and more
insidious forms of slavery and hierarchical control of society, of
relationships between people, of individuals must be dismantled. From
technology, only that which alleviates human toil, improves the standard
of living, contributes to social equality should be taken. Modernity
stinks of corpses. Rebuilding egalitarian social relations, forms of
economy managed from below, revisiting and purging of all patriarchal
and religious waste the values of peasant civilization, of a social life
attentive to human relationships, marked by slowness and sharing,
represents a weapon of resistance and a way of attacking
state-capitalist domination.
Depopulation, emigration, city, countryside
Urban structures have followed colonial processes, the small centers of
the interior have emptied themselves, transforming themselves into
reservoirs of labor for the industry of Northern Italy and Europe.
Emigration has fulfilled the task of calming unemployment and imposing a
subsistence economy; today, largely intellectual, it continues to dig a
human and social void in all cities and towns. The economic resources of
Sicilians are drained towards manufacturing and industrial companies in
the north that monopolize the consumer market on the island.
With the launch of the industrial centers of Priolo-Meililli-Augusta;
Gela; Milazzo, etc., thousands of farmers, artisans, inhabitants of
inland towns already penalized by the ancestral deficiencies of services
and infrastructures, poured there contributing to the depopulation.
It is necessary to review the city/countryside relationship resulting
from imbalances, speculations, political choices and the cause of land
consumption, urban imbalances, social marginalization, environmental
unsustainability. A general movement of "going back" must be achieved
through the search for liveability of mountain and internal sites; a
process that can and must be combined with bottom-up policies for
welcoming migrants, and that can offer the possibility of returning to
our emigrants.
In this context, all the strategies of tourist and cultural colonization
currently in place must be fought, which accentuate dependence,
self-exploitation, the devastation of territories, gentrification, the
cancellation of community relations and relationships with the land and
nature.
The climate issue and water
The climate crisis represents an extremely serious problem for Sicily.
In the next ten years, over half of its territory could be irremediably
desertified. This fact can only aggravate all the problems of the
island, starting with depopulation, emigration, unemployment.
The climate crisis, however, is essentially a political crisis, and it
hits Sicily with the violent devastation caused by economic and military
interests, which have diverted huge resources towards colonial
objectives at the expense of the territories, primary infrastructures,
agriculture. Climate change caused by the capitalist system has found
little defense in the island territory, in the vast abandoned areas,
hitting an overexposed land.
The case of water is paradigmatic: insufficient and unmaintained dams;
leaky water networks; pathetic management of rainwater; abundant waste
towards industrial, military, tourist and wealthy bourgeoisie
structures; privatization of networks; speculation, have sunk the
island's resistance to the lack of rainfall. It is such a serious and
constantly worsening fact that without a paradigm shift, obtainable only
with an overwhelming push from below by the thirsty people, there will
be no reversal of the trend.
The same goes for fires, a disaster linked to specific interests or to
the state of abandonment of the territories, on which bottom-up
intervention processes are underway and need to be expanded.
Mitigating and adapting to climate change only makes sense if it is done
with the perspective of overcoming the current state of affairs that
caused the climate disaster, for a reconquest of the territory, clean
and organic agriculture, and the reappropriation of its own destiny by
the population.
Independence
We need to make a courageous choice for independence. It means that the
Sicilian people must walk on their own two feet, must be able to
self-determine outside the capitalist and state mortgages that have
subjected them to the regime of exploitation and psychological
subordination to power in its various manifestations. An independence
with a strong anti-state and self-management imprint, feminist and
ecologist, federalist and internationalist, based on the liberation of
the Sicilian subaltern classes, that is, all the social realities that
live in this land, beyond origins and presumed blood ties, in strong
opposition to the hegemonic, privileged, mafia classes that base their
existence on the oppression of what, with a somewhat obsolete term, we
can call the Sicilian proletariat, revised and corrected according to
the economic-social context of our times. Independence as a concrete
prospect of emancipation free from interclassism, hegemonism, will and
aspirations of power, enemies of the autonomy of the oppressed classes.
Within independence, the self-government of the territories, federally
connected in a network and united by mutual reciprocal support, with
class, anti-state and self-management characteristics, and based on
assemblies and executive offices under popular control. Reject the
ambiguities of those who use the concept of territory as a homogeneous
whole, made up of institutions and citizens, masters and workers,
centers of power and their victims, operating the biggest of mystifications.
The Mediterranean
The centrality of the Mediterranean for Sicily must mean a reversal of
geopolitical relations marked by imperialistic interests, the robbery of
the resources of poor countries, the role of an armed island
aggressively projected against other countries and of a prison island
for migrants erected in defense of Fortress Europe.
The Mediterranean is a world of relationships and cultures sedimented
over time, and must be a sea of peace and harmony between peoples with
Sicily as a bridge to all the coastal countries and societies
impoverished by colonialism, imperialism, wars and robberies of resources.
An independent Sicily in an independent Mediterranean is more than a
perspective: it is a commitment of today, anti-racist, anti-militarist,
anti-imperialist, with a marked feminist character that places gender
issues at the foundation of the liberation of oppressed peoples. A
commitment against political, religious, financial hierarchies, for an
autonomous path of emancipation based on comparison, solidarity, mutual
respect, revolutionary internationalism.
Questions of method
The knots highlighted so far cannot be untied without struggle and
conflict. It is appropriate that the methods of this struggle are
plural, different but closely interconnected and complementary. Up to
now there has not been a method that has proven successful or superior
to the others, and it is harmful, as we have seen, to put the various
methods in opposition to each other, reproducing sectarianism that
borders on self-harm. Convergence is the basis of the strength that the
adoption of different methods can produce. Convergence of objectives and
interests, autonomy in the way of carrying them forward, intelligence in
reading the phases, the occasions, the possibilities; and if a method in
certain circumstances may perhaps be more incisive than others, it
should not be forgotten that they are all at the basis of the overall
strength of change.
It is always the common goal that unites; a goal to be achieved with
means consistent with it, without any dogmatism. Defense, self-defense,
must be organized through the adoption of adequate strategies that
cannot be imprisoned in ideological cages; everyone must be able to
contribute with their own choices of action. Individual or mass direct
action, union or grassroots action in the territories, experimentation
in the field of work, education, life choices, editorial, cultural,
artistic initiatives, propaganda by deed, by writing, by word, by
example. A rich and varied conflict projected towards clear objectives
can face the daily devastating and oppressive action of power, gain
ground and free up spaces, open the gap to a future of freedom, that new
world that - as Buenaventura Durruti said - we already carry in our hearts.
http://sicilialibertaria.it
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