Re: Pisa demonstration?

[Hobo <hobo@xxxxxx>]

At 08.24 17/02/97 +1000, steve wrote:
>So could anyone who might have been in Pisa tell us what happened, and/or
>something about the mood in Italy right now?

i'll try to give you a brief report.
as Steve explained, Adriano Sofri, former leader of ''Lotta Continua'', was
arrested with his friends Bompressi and Pietrostefani, charged of the murder
of the police official Calabresi in 1972. An ''ad hoc'' committee has been
formed by Sofri's friends and many moderate leftist intellectuals to ask for
the grace for the three. This committee, called ''Liberi liberi''
(http://www.sofri.org), is only intended to solve this case, claiming the
innocence of Sofri and considering his imprisonment as an abuse, an
aberration of the judicial system.
People from the social centres and generally of the ''autonomist'' area, of
course, aren't of the same opinion. We think we all are guilty for the
state. We don't want individual solutions, but a *political solution* for
all the political prisoners of the seventies, as part of a big massive
rebellion to the state. We have done what they charge us of, we made an
attempt to subvert and change the status of the present things (in my mind
this latter should be a quotation of Marx, put it in the canon english form,
please), we don't pretend to be innocent, we just want to put an end to a
political age that is definitely closed for all but the hundreds of comrades
still in jail or in exile.
the ''liberi liberi'' committee organized for Feb. 15th a sit-in in Pisa,
which since the beginning was intended to be a spectacular event, with the
partecipation of the big names of the left-wing italian show scene, singers,
bands, performers, etc., all asking the grace for Sofri, in a style that in
Italy is unusual for demos, something that make us think of those american
campaigns for presidencial elections (just to give you the idea).
we organized in the same day a march with the partecipation of all social
centres but those of Toscana (the region where the same Pisa is). These
latter didn't partecipate because they thought the media should have either
ignorate them or associate them to the other (bigger) initiative (if you can
read italian, you can find the main objects of this debate on
http://www.ecn.org/lists/cslist/).
Anyway we started our demo from a periferial square in Pisa and went on to
the place where the sit-in was happening, passing through the jail where
Sofri and friends are imprisoned.
When we entered the sit-in place we were 3000 people, and the 15.000 who
were there started clap their hands. We talked explaining our opinions and
many many people agreed with us. After this Prospero Gallinari (former BR
militant) had a brief speech that was reported by state television.
I think this demo has been successful and useful as a first step of a path
that can possibly lead to some positive results.
Next date a national meeting in Rome in the late March.

bye Hobo

-------------------------
collettivo infodiret(t)e
ECN - Padova
e-mail: hobo@xxxxxxx
http://www.ecn.org/pad/



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