Saturday, April 25th, at 3 pm, at the plaque of the anarchist partisan | Ilio Baroni | on Corso Giulio Cesare at the corner of Corso Novara, where Ilio fell fighting on April 26, 1945. Remembrance, speeches, drinks, flowers, music. And, live, the Cor'okkio (the Cor'okkio) in the anarchist and anti-fascist songbook (If it rains, meet in Piazza Crispi). Like every year, we gather at the plaque commemorating Ilio Baroni, anarchist partisan. Today, more than ever, gathering in that corner of the suburbs, where Baroni fell fighting, is not a mere exercise in memory, but an opportunity to weave together the threads of struggle, because the baton left by those who are no longer with us is now in our hands.
Ilio Baroni, a Tuscan worker who emigrated to Turin in the 1920s, was commander of the VII SAP brigade at the Ferriere. The SAP (Italian General Staff) sabotaged production, clandestinely distributed anti-fascist leaflets, and prepared for insurrection. Ilio, known as "il Moro," was a key figure in guerrilla warfare.
On April 25, Turin was paralyzed by the general strike; the insurrection broke out, and the city became a battlefield.
Baroni and his men attacked the Dora station and won a victory. A request for help came from Grandi Motori. Il Moro did not hesitate to help his comrades in the midst of a furious battle, and fell under fire.
It was April 26. Ilio Baroni would never see the moment he had fought so hard for his entire life...
Baroni and the other armed workers defended the factories from destruction, because they still remembered the 1920s, the factory occupations, and the armed struggle to oust the bosses forever.
But fascism didn't die on April 25, 1945...
Between exploitation, precarious and dangerous jobs, deaths at sea, racist laws, soldiers on the streets, and war, democracy increasingly resembles fascism. The heirs of dictatorship are in government today and, day after day, they are intensifying their repression against the poor and political and social opponents.
The democracy born of the Resistance never reckoned with fascism, whose butchers were amnestied by the Minister of Justice, the "communist" Palmiro Togliatti.
Today, the direct heirs of fascism are in government and are restoring fascism. Formal dictatorship isn't necessary to erase the slim margins of freedom granted at the cost of a century-long struggle.
On the eve of April 25, they approved preventive detention for political activists disliked by the government.
Meloni, like Mussolini: the special laws of 1926 have gradually become the "normal" laws of 2026.
The government sentences migrants to death with a naval blockade and confines anti-fascists (DASPO, expulsion orders, special surveillance, preventive seizure).
Today, the people of Barriera have different faces and stories, but they share the same conditions of exploitation and oppression as those who fought fascism because they wanted a society without a state or masters.
The end of fascism did not bring the life for which so many had fought and died. But the thread of struggle has never broken.
Living in the suburbs has never been easy. Today, it's even worse: everywhere, the lines of homeless people, without income, without prospects, are growing. To make ends meet, many are adapting to a myriad of precarious, underpaid, undeclared jobs, with no protections. Everywhere, the list of those killed and maimed at work grows longer: with each passing year, the rich become richer, the poor poorer.
We pay the price of the wars that bloodied the planet here too.
The price of gas and electricity has doubled, many people are facing eviction or their homes are up for auction. Healthcare is a luxury that few can afford.
For years now, Barriera di Milano has become a laboratory for experimenting with previously unthinkable social control techniques, just to avoid spending a penny on housing, healthcare, transportation, and schools. In recent years, military spending has steadily increased, and the Italian armed forces' missions abroad have multiplied.
The fascists in government are fanning the flames of war between poor Italians and poor immigrants, to have a free hand to wage war on us all.
In poor neighborhoods, military control has become normal. Entire areas of the neighborhood are under siege, with constant roundups of undocumented people or those living off the informal economy. The soldiers of Operation "Safe Streets" offer the illusion of security to those struggling to make ends meet and unable to afford housing or private doctor visits.
Turin is transforming from a car-crazy city into a bombing city and a showcase for tourists. A showcase that the poor who spend hours in the park must not dirty. The aspiration to have a non-commodified social life must be repressed. The government at all levels points the finger at the poorest, racialized people, with the constant blackmail of identity documents, to conceal the social war it has unleashed against all the poor, Italians and foreigners, siding with the bosses large and small.
Ethnically targeted territorial control aims to nip in the bud any possible social uprising.
As anarchists rooted in the neighborhood for over forty years, we try to build solidarity networks, information initiatives, struggle, and social interaction in the spaces besieged by the police, in those threatened with eviction or evacuation.
With struggle, solidarity, and mutual support, we can make our lives better. Let's reclaim the neighborhood spaces militarized and deserted by the police and the military. Let's try to imagine ending, starting now, the state, the bosses, the military, and the police.
They tell us the fairy tale that a complex society is ungovernable from below, while they drown us in the chaos of centralized and bureaucratic management of schools, hospitals, and transportation.
Building local assemblies, spaces, schools, transportation, and self-managed clinics is not a utopia but the only possible path to liberating ourselves from the state and capitalism.
Security means housing, income, and healthcare for all, not soldiers on the streets!
Memory is not a rhetorical exercise, but the lifeblood that flows between the struggles of yesterday and today.
For decades, they have embalmed the Resistance, reducing it to a mere struggle for national liberation, to erase its subversive, internationalist thrust against the state and the bosses.
Today, they would like us all to enlist, all deployed in the wars in which our country is directly or indirectly engaged. We are not in this situation.
We do not enlist; we reject patriotic rhetoric as a means of legitimizing all states and their expansionist claims.
Antimilitarism, internationalism, and revolutionary defeatism have been central to the struggles of the workers' movement since its origins. Exploitation and oppression strike equally at all latitudes; conflict against "one's" masters and against "one's" rulers is the best way to oppose state violence and the ferocity of capitalism everywhere.
We stand with the people who, everywhere in the world, are dying under the bombs; we stand with those who, everywhere, suffer imprisonment and repression for actively opposing the war.
We are against the war economy here and everywhere.
We stand with those everywhere who desert the war between states, vying for imperial domination over territories, resources, and the lives of women, men, and children.
We are against war and those who arm it.
We are deserters from every war, partisans against every state.
The comrades who fought on the streets of Barriera held in their hands the dream of ending oppression and poverty.
They were people like Ilio Baroni, a worker at the Ferriere, who fell fighting for anarchy.
Their memory lives on in our hands.
It is a constantly renewed commitment. It is an unavoidable responsibility.
On April 25th, after the initiative in Barriera, we will bring the distro to the royal gardens.
Anarchist segment at the April 25th march in Ciriè: 8:30 pm, Piazza Castello
Anarchist May Day
Friday, May 1st
9:00 am, Piazza Vittorio
Antimilitarist segment
Against all homelands, for a world without borders!
Peace among the oppressed, war on the oppressors!
Turin Anarchist Federation
Corso Palermo 46 meetings every Tuesday at 8:30 pm
https://www.anarresinfo.org/25-aprile-contro-la-guerra-il-fascismo-la-repressione-per-la-rivoluzione-sociale/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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