Italy - Eva

Interview Details

• Region: Europe - Italy
• Language: English
• Interviewee: Eva
• Interviewers: Terry Dunne & Mags Liddy
• Date: 2017
• PGA Affiliation: Ya Basta
• Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0t9a6tka9e7yo2ho5uoal/PGA-Italy-2-Eva.docx?rlkey=rlz4knpz8gjlif2gqm32d6rkl&dl=0

Transcript

Mags Liddy: And we begin by asking a lot of people about their involvement with PGA. As you were saying the years that you were involved there …but maybe maybe we go a little bit back from that and tell me how did you get… and how did you become an activist, maybe going back. How did you become interested, or involved.

Eva: [silence]Yeah that ah..

Mags Liddy: or would you prefer just to talk about PGA?

Eva: No no no no it’s fine. I was thinking you know, am I don’t know, if I will be able to answer the question..Yeah it goes back a long time. And I am not able to track the moment when you define yourself as an activist, cos of other things, other experiences that happen to make us feel like they’re involved with.

Mags Liddy: So it’s always been kinda a part of . . . .

Eva: Yeah I suppose… but let’s say in terms of for example at the more international level at a level that wasn’t purely just local —locally in Rome would be being involved with social centers, with self-management you know, collectives of various kinds.

Mags Liddy: OK.

Eva: And that would be connected from my university years or something like that. But you know more European/international level. I guess it was around, during the second half of the 1990s when I would be in university and a couple of experiences which definitely you know very involving, very interesting for a young person looking to finding ways to get involved, .. one was the big story with the demo in Amsterdam, I think was in 1997 or something like that.

And it was the end of some sort of a caravan or something like that a mechanism that had been created at the European level one of the first attempts if you like locating connections and mobilisation at the international level meeting, movements that would have been around the social centers and say radical left. It was one of the first times when we basically collectively occupied the train and actually managed to go from Milan to Amsterdam by train in big numbers. You know reclaiming the rights to transport and the right to protest etc. at the European level.

Mags Liddy: OK.

Eva: So I just went on with friends etc. I wouldn’t have been one of the organizers and I was quite young and I suppose that was one of the experiences that sort of led me then in a different phase a few years later to be involved in networks such as the PGA.

Mags Liddy: Ok yeah

Eva: Together with that another important experience was with me when the Intergalactico of the Zapatistas in Spain in the mid-nineties. Yes and that was the second international meeting of the Zapatistas, the first one was actually in Mexico, Chiapas, maybe two years before that. I think that was in 1996. And again I just went with people from my collective in University. And it was an international meeting pretty much built by the Zapatistas and then by parts of the grassroots social movements in Europe. And it was a very important experience that had to do with the kind of thing and get involved during the phase of the “no global” movement.

You know between Seattle and Genoa, before all that history I suppose for me for example at the more European international level, those would have been two experiences as a sort of young student where that kind of led to other things being put into motion for me. Sure.

Mags Liddy: And just to clarify what the Amsterdam caravan was. Was it something to do with climate change or was that to do with the Indian farmers?

Eva: No. The Indian farmers were around later; they were around Seattle basically. They came to Europe in 1999.

Terry Dunne: It was an E.U. summit in Amsterdam in 1997 wasn’t it?

Eva: Yes it was, it was definitely an E.U. thing. And let’s say I think that sort of Trotskyite networks would have definitely been involved at the European level and they were part of the reason why there was some sort of organisational structure which would have been more unusual at the grassroots level at the time to have so structured the network of contacts. And I think that part of the Trotskyites were involved in some unions at the European level and more independent ones would have been involved. But that for me definitely I would have been just the protest goer if you like. I don’t think I went to meetings, or anything like that- it was more like my friends telling me about it and then going to things.

Mags Liddy: Yes yes. And the same with the encuentro in Spain?

Eva: yes and also I already, you know also I was in a university collective.

Mags Liddy: And your university collective, was this a group of friends or was it something a bit more organised?

Eva: no it was more political. I studied physics at the time… we had a bit of a political collective. I went to university in Rome which has always been a fairly politicized university.

Mags Liddy: OK. Yeah. And so from there, and that role as you say as more of a protest-goer, how did your role change, develop.

Eva: Let me see…Well I think in 1999 in fact, yes in 1999, connecting with some people from my university but not just them, we intertwined with the local metropolitan movement, and we occupied a space in an abandoned school that was close to [name of] university … And it was both a social space and a housing occupation. It was an old school building and on the upper floors, it was families, and some people without a house that were occupying it. And the downstairs just more like a social/political space. Yeah.

And the idea was that we were beginning to sort of meet, we were into the first discourse about the precarious generation and a sort of new kind of needs. And so we were attempting to get university students but also traditional families into the housing movement in Rome, which has always been a very strong movement in Rome.

Mags Liddy: Has it?

Eva: Yes and that was in 1999 because it was 1999 and because it was a little bit of an experience which mixed kind of university political collectives, with social centres, with organised social movements…

We occupied this house in 1999 and it was in San Lorenzo, in a neighborhood it’s very close to university. And it was a little bit of a social space, but also a political space and there was this interconnection between university students but also different kinds to organize social movement and the world of social centers. You know because of that mixture it was a bit centered on the kind of interests that we were… the more social collective, the more social side of the project. [pause]

We started getting an interest in and around the time of Seattle even before that a bit in that kind of political dimension. And so then that became one of the places where for example many of the meetings at the city level towards the mobilisation in Prague in September 2000 and then in Genoa, to organize support and the participation from Rome and the meetings were held there and we got very much involved as a social local space but into that dimension

Mags Liddy: Okay okay

Eva: I suppose that was the kind of path for me..

Mags Liddy: and doing back to the encuentro in Spain. This was where the PGA began and was given its name and everything.

Eva: Yeah? that I don’t know. Oh no no I don’t know. I can’t.. I mean is this something you know?

Mags Liddy: Yes it was an encuentro in Spain, so many organizations and activists from around the world were coming together and they wanted something more than just talking about their commonality of their issues. They also wanted some kind of - you can’t call it an organisation but I guess a communications network and they wanted action and they.. and that inspired Peoples’ Global Action against World Trade Organization and neo-liberalism. The full title came about

Eva: that is wonderful, that I didn’t you know, I wasn’t aware of because… exactly

Mags Liddy: And what do you remember from the encuentro? Or no …Maybe it’s a bit too…

Eva: yes. I remember many things of course… from Rome I suppose that you know that in Italy one with the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, as the part of the grassroots left, and the social centres etc. started fairly early to establish a connection and so I suppose that’s done also with respect to the meeting in Spain, even you know you’ve been asked just maybe let’s say you know the young kids from the University collective going together with the most organised bigger networks, it was very much the connection of the pro-Zapatista Italians. Yeah so I remember it a lot from that sort of perspective.

Mags Liddy: OK.

Eva: But then I was in the whole, you know Barcelona, and all the way down to Indianos (?) that crazy place in the middle of Andalucía, where it all ended with the big long trip by a train. Yes trains played an important role in those years. [laughter] Yeah. You know it was possible to have big numbers of people, cross-country Europe by train. Yes.

Mags Liddy: And was Seattle a surprise or had you been hearing about the PGA call for action before that?

Eva: We had got involved when the Indian farmers came and that was in the Spring of ‘99, and again in Italy somehow it was through Ya Basta – so it was through the Zapatista connection if you like that local movements were involved in hosting them and the Karnataka farmers they stayed in Rome a good few days in big numbers because it was the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organisation] protests.

Mags Liddy: Yes yes.

Eva: And for them that was somehow relevant so it was a good 300 of them that stayed for at least two or three days if I remember well. OK. And so it was a good few months of sort of organization at the local level even before there was put into motion

Mags Liddy: a lot of preparation for that…

Eva: You know, I started getting involved a little bit and they were hosted in a social center that is in the outskirts of Rome, that is, it was a farm because Rome has this peculiarity that it’s got certain parts of rural countryside inside the city, a sort of metropolitan countryside really.

Mags Liddy: Really?

Eva: Because the sprawl of the city has made it so that it’s got incorporated parts that are still rural, farms and so. So they stayed in the tents with a whole camp that was basically organized. So it was a big collective sort of experience. And but it was unusual for everyone, it was unusual that they wanted to demonstrate at the FAO we’d never even thought about the fact that the FAO headquarters were there, and they are right in the city center, in the center of Rome. And then they organized this march and it was all a bit surreal if you like because it was 300 Indians and a couple of hundred Romans, local activists involved in this standing outside of the FAO. It was a sort of new and unusual thing. And there was this big assembly that was held in the social centre with all of them, during which they started talking about Seattle and they started explicitly inviting people to go or to organise locally. And so we then decided to do something local but it was fairly small. I suppose we didn’t expect the thing then to become that big.

Mags Liddy: Sure

Eva: but it surely had you know the [ethos] had arrived before it had even happened, yes there was something in motion but it was via that channel. Yeah. Yes exactly.

Mags Liddy: And it was Prague was the next?

Eva: Yeah say actually that was basically for me personally with the PGA it was after the Karnataka farmer experience, then Seattle and then Prague started to be put into motion I suppose. There was this summer preparatory meeting in the outskirts of Prague in the sort of countryside near Prague that I participated in and I went with Ya Basta, it was mainly Ya Basta Milan people with me as a guest from Rome and I suppose a couple of extras … so I suppose this is when I got to interact with the PGA more. Yes and I remember I think it was actually Direct Action Network, the American, the U.S. one ..

And there was this preparatory meeting and it was in August of 2000… I suppose that was pretty much the PGA. And I remember that there was also some connection from the U.S. with what I suppose would have been the Direct Action Network, I think. Y’know It rings a bell…

Mags Liddy: what happened at the meeting or what it… was about the logistics.

Eva: It was very interesting. I suppose it was about everything. It lasted a good few days and we all stayed together in this farm. And so it was kind of a long process. I don’t know a good few days maybe in my mind it’s longer, but it was… maybe 3 at least. I guess it wasn’t the first one but it was the first one I went to but I don’t think it was first because it was just one month before so the work had started before then. But it was about the content and it was about the practice, the techniques, the media you know- in a way it was about everything. But it was the first time for example for me, the first time I was exposed to the methodology that would be consensus based, you know oriented at participation as a practice …. And many things happened.

And then from there really the ones who were more full-time involved stayed there working on arrangements for you know the next four weeks while we got back and started working on building up the participation. Which from Italy was quite big because you know I suppose it turned out to be … because you know I suppose the things you had a chance to talk about with Luca.

Mags Liddy: we didn’t actually talk about Prague in a huge detail. I don’t think so.

Eva: We went to get on the train, and it was again a train occupation. Yes that’s it. That would be another story.

Mags Liddy: going on to PGA then as an organization tells you what PGA did well?

Eva: Well I suppose at the time… Well I think you kind of understood definitely during those two years between the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, definitely understood in a way how practice was you know or put it over simply that the practice was the theory, and the way that you really needed to exactly not define in terms of one identity, defining one organization or an identity or no one place or one way etc. but you needed to create this sort of networking infrastructure that was necessary to develop some horizons as possible. I think that the PGA had it quite clear, or the PGA as I experienced it I suppose, not as an organisation, because I was never involved in that experience at that level to know enough of it.

I interacted with it as a network, I perceive it as a network, as somehow a local activist that got very involved with the transnational dimension of the struggle during those years. The PGA was a tool, it was very extremely useful to me, with a very important level of awareness of how the methodology makes certain things possible in that sense. For example I think it anticipated…the way certain things re-emerged around 2010, in Spain and what happened with social movements at the world level. You know I think certain things re-emerge that have to do, for example, with the methodology, with the practice as the struggle, as an important part of the struggle, as something that makes the struggle possible. I think that was very much a culture that I suppose was part of the DNA of that experience.

Mags Liddy: Yes

Eva: That experience expressed a lot and it was an important driver for that culture, an important you know, tool available for that kind of dimension. Mags Liddy: and you think that the form of participation, that horizontalism, that methodology, you say you can see how it re-emerged in 2011?

Eva: Yeah I dunno, it was just one of those components I suppose. Yeah. It was an important part of that methodology if you look at it in a way yes did re-emerge.. as a key also then in the completely different dynamics ten years later. The most interesting thing of such social movements that sort of exploded around 2011 and that was part of it and then of course in terms of the political horizon in the face of you know the global transformations and everything to do with it was essential, it was essential to build a common discourse and it was essential to build a common space again, a space for relationships that then managed to echo certain things to echo one another. And for that common discourse around you know global justice as it emerged back then so in that sense too I think it was an extremely important experience. (28.25)

Mags Liddy: OK. And what.. . then the opposite kind of question then of what do you think PGA did not do well or what aspects might not have worked so well?

Eva: Well in a way, you know I don’t know exactly how it continued after Genoa in 2001 and Geneva since 2002. I personally went back to being very involved at a more local metropolitan level. And I know that then somehow it continued for a way longer, much longer. And I suppose there as with many experiences from that time, it sort of did manage to avoid you know falling into those inevitable sort of down phases in which then a lot of identitarian mechanisms emerge, y’know the sort of horizon shrinks. But I don’t know.

Mags Liddy: When you returned to that kind of local level did the transnational experience have much of an impact?

Eva: Yes yes it definitely did. And then changed everything, really mixed and you know everything changed the framework of the discourse, and the practices and the people. And you know not just, yes because we were a new generation if you like that, sure, but growing up through that experience that then changes what you do in your own city, in your own town. So yes in that sense yes.

Again there was then a phase in which I think then I think that as an immediate political space a common political space for a while it wasn’t possible, or for me at least it wasn’t a possible dimension any longer. And there was a need to readjust, to redefine things and I think that after that it was more osmosis if you like. It happens more with the Mayday experiences and the experience of the European, the Euro Mayday networks that emerged around 2004. That expressed best that culture and the continuation of it, you know the global movement all those direct networks as they were.

OK. I don’t know if I am expressing …

Mags Liddy: So yeah the European Mayday networks- that hasn’t come up before has it?

Terry Dunne: that is Alex Foti.

Mags Liddy: is he involved in it?

Eva: Yes it’s from Milan, the Mayday Milan, they initiated the whole thing from the very beginning [pause] What I mean is that after say 2003 and the “No War” big demonstrations after that for some time. For example I was in my social center in Rome. Yes of course you continue to have once in a while. The occasional group coming from that struggle from the other side of the world that still sort of connected with the to the face of the movement of movements. So yes you know you would talk, you would exchange connections, between these things.

Mags Liddy: Yeah. So I had asked there a little bit about the legacy around PGA. And one question we’ve been asking people is what kind of lessons the PGA experience has for social movements today?

Eva: Yeah, lessons. That again, it’s like this, it’s a bit simplistic, but what has been said, if you like in general about that season, you know that phase of the global movement? I don’t know. You know, it is totally applicable to the specific experience of the PGA or in general, the government from a European metropolitan perspective, as mine, you know, from a city in the south of Europe, but. Again, how you know, the big debate, it’s been out there for some years now, you know?

Yes, we had it right. You know, some have been saying we were right, but we were right, but we lost, you know? Yes. But for sure, on the one hand. Yes, in setting the methodology, the practice, the whole reason of a common global struggle from below built in participatory terms and all of that. Yes. But there was still a lot of “us and them.” It was still pretty much the model of the north, and the south of the world in a lot of the struggles that we were doing. It was something that it was about in the end, the life of the Karnataka guys. Of course, it concerned me because it was Monsanto, but it wasn’t directly impacting my life.

Whereas of course, then with the crisis and everything, we realized how much that model impacted our directly, our own lives too, and the capacity to speak subjectively, you know, and to rethink the whole solidarity paradigm. Not in terms of yes, we’re building international solidarity in India. You know? But in the end, being aware of our privileges, we know, you know, in the. Everything is clear in the framework of capitalism and in the but not the level in which it impacted our lives and the level of what that meant. When you speak of fragmentation, of social fragmentation, of loneliness, you know, of all of that and also how much we needed to speak from a subjective perspective.

And somehow that was at the time doing it was, you know, coming up the seeds. You know, we’re starting to live, like. So at the time, but this wasn’t mature, this wasn’t mature, it was about, you know.

Mags Liddy: And it was the crisis that it was after the crisis.

Eva: Well, that yeah, after the crisis that paradigm changed somehow

But of course, you know. Yeah, where I suppose this is a debate that has been going on during the last few years when looking at that experience at the turn of the century. That I think has been part of the things to consider. To, you know, to be aware of.

Terry Dunne: But one thing we haven’t really got a handle on is the situation in Italy now and because most of the Italian interviews we’ve been doing have been more focused on the process of transnational organizing.

And I was speaking to people in Catalonia, and there’s a strong sense of continuity. And from 1999 to 2001 up to today? Yeah. And maybe we haven’t spoken to enough people about the situation in Italy today. I get the sense that there’s less of a sense of continuity in that. I’m sure the situation for social movements in Italy today, and I don’t think there’s much legacy from the sort of 1999 2000 period.

Eva: Yes, I would find it a little bit more difficult to answer the question also, because personally, I’ve been a little bit less involved much in the last, let’s say, two or three years. So of course, I have a history and continuity with, you know, with social movements in Italy. But of course it’s never easy to sort of answer the question.

But, uh. Of course, Italy has been experiencing, you know, what’s in Spain, what in other parts of southern Europe in a different way have. You know, what happened in terms of social movements in the last few years. And of course, this means that the framework is very different and much more complicated, and it’s way more difficult to speak in terms of a pure continuity. Then, of course, when you’re speaking about the legacy of something that is big on a big world level, you know, social movement from below that in Italy. Was highly expressed, then you’re speaking of something that is a big legacy that has been a game changer for so many things in general, that is not that you can’t trace, you know, things that are diffuse.

And Italy also has always had this thing, and it keeps on having these two sides of the medal where. Yes, the sort of national dimension is important, and in certain moments, antagonist radical movements in Italy have managed to express quite an impressive level of strength. Like at the national level. But it’s also always been a place of a lot of proliferation of self management and self-organization experiences at the local level, in different parts of the country, in different ways. And all of that, of course, was strongly affected and strongly sort of, you know, in an exchange of that big experience of that big movement that impacted Italy a lot. So in that sense, yeah, I suppose that would be part of the of the answer, then to answer the question about the situation in Italy now for movements is a bigger question, and it’s got to do with somehow an analysis of the situation in this country, in this country, in Europe, one of the European space and all of that which we can’t exactly get into now, but.

Mags Liddy: Was there any legacy specifically for Genoa? The, uh, the events there?

Yes, of course. Genoa, the events there then determined that it’s not just that he’s the legacy. If you want to sort of historicize the whole thing. Of course, in Italy, what happened in Genoa in the aftermath of Genoa? Yeah, our whole big legacy of its own. So be a good and bad one. It’s a complex one. It’s an ongoing one. If you like. You know, the legal history of the thing isn’t over. The repression side of the thing isn’t over, you know, so that’s a chapter of its own, if you like. Sure. But yes, clearly then, Genoa was a break. There is a before and after. The movements need to be grassroots social movements. There’s a before and after genoa for sure. For my generation, there’s a before and after. And it’s not just before and after that, that phase of the global movement and the so-called movement of movements. There’s a before and after Genoa 2001, that’s for sure. Yes.

Terry Turning point

Eva: Turning. Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

Mags Liddy: If I could ask you about the dynamics of PGA, the kind of internal dynamics. Was there ever or can you recall issues around gender in the organization and in the organizing of; or did you ever have any? Was there ever any gender? Did ever gender emerge as a concern?

Eva: And again, I don’t know the history of the PGA as an organization, but. in my experience with anything that was PGA related and meetings, mobilizations, you know, whatever that were in and around PGA or that the PGA people would go to and I as an Italian would relate to, For me, the kind of case where you would be with the PGA would be a better space gender-wise and a transnational space compared to the political Italian space was a better space in gender terms. Basically for me at the time. The culture at the level of the radical grassroots movements and all the social tendencies and all of that in Italy was a disaster, in gender terms. And it wasn’t a positive space. Now, for example, in the last two years, a new sort of feminist movement is emerging and it’s obvious that it’s easy. Yeah. And that is extremely welcome. At the time, it was quite a disaster. And so the transnational space and the kind of space around the organization of Prague, the international meetings around Genoa. The level of awareness was much greater, the level a lot of things were different in a positive sense. Ok. And the debate frequently was with us as Italians because we would be criticized. There would be difficulties to deal with the components of the Italian movement because it was very male oriented and sort of not very evolved in that sense. So that would be the kind of debate that I would have more at the time rather than the other way around discussing, I don’t know, difficulties, for example, at the gender level I see in a situation like the PGA network as a transnational one. Yeah.

Terry Dunne: I think it came out from a few of the interviews we’ve done that the Italian movement moved in a more kind of participatory direction from its Experience to being in an international network. Makes me wonder what it was like before. It must have been a kind of curious hybrid.

Eva: Yeah, I suppose it was a curious hybrid, though, also because of really the longer history, you know, you would have to look at the entire sort, of course, from the 1970s onwards. But what emerged and matured during the nineties was a hybrid with the whole social centers thing, and it was coming from the tradition of the radical organized left, self-organized left of the nineteen seventies with all its differences. But then that sort of after the big defeat and collapse of the eighties that had re-emerged in terms of mushrooming, widespread social experiences that started from the politics of the space. And then you have the social centers, you know, and so you got a very mixed and strange hybrid in terms of the political culture. But the the face of the global movement definitely helped in sort of getting rid of the most the negative legacy, if you like, in terms of hierarchies and things and internal antagonisms and the whole struggle for who’s more hegemonic, you know, and getting rid of that old culture and opening up to a new culture of participation.

Mags Liddy: About whether there’s anything else that we should have asked? Anything we might have neglected?

Eva: No. For the moment, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say so. But it is. Yeah, it’s a big, you know If this it’s a big kind of history and it’s got so many different histories. You know, you can look at them different ways.