AUT: The Body As a Weapon for Civil Disobedience

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Or, the Consequences of Foucault
>From Chiapas to Prague, not just in fact, but clearly in some people's
understanding!
Harry
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 16:30:56 -0800 (PST)
From: the slave <keith_v@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Accion-Zapatista List <accion-zapatista@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Body As a Weapon for Civil Disobedience

Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada
_______________________
Translated by irlandesa


Masiosare
La Jornada
Sunday, October 15, 2000.


The Body As a Weapon for Civil Disobedience


*Jesús Ramírez Cuevas*

...The Tutte Bianche (white monkeys) went to Prague in order to
participate in the protests against the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World Bank.  Hundreds of young Italian activists from the Social
Centers and from the Ya Basta Association, parliamentarians and even
religious persons, carried out ingenious civil disobedience tactics in the
face of the Czech police, who threw gas at them and beat them with their
billy clubs.

The political imagination and clothing - or lack thereof - of these
globalphobes caught the attention of journalists and surprised demonstrators
from other countries who were accompanying them...

Two forces found themselves body to body on the Nusle bridge in Prague,
each of them defending an idea of a different world.  On one side, a
contingent of men and women dressed in white suits, protected with foam
rubber, helmets, gas masks, shields made from garbage cans and an entire
repertoire of the most incredible instruments, from nets of colored
balloons to barriers of tires.  On the other side, a fence of police in
Robocop uniforms, protected by tanks, tear gas launchers, shields and
truncheons.  An impassable wall blocking their way.

The police were there in order to protect representatives of the
planet's financial and economic powers.  The demonstrators were questioning
globalization in the name of millions of persons who are suffering its
consequences:  hunger, poverty and death.  In the middle of the two forces,
a nude young men passed by, his body tattooed with denuncias against savage
capitalism, in between each confrontation.

In the midst of the battle, Don Vitaliano, a parish priest from
Avellino, was helping the demonstrators in their attempts to break the
circle which was protecting the thousands of IMF and World Bank delegates.
"With our bodies, with what we are, we came to defend the rights of
millions, dignity and justice.  Even with our lives.  In the face of the
total control of the world which the owners of money are exercising, we have
only our bodies for protesting and rebelling against injustice," he said.

Luca, spokesperson for the Tutte Bianche, said to the journalists who
had come to Prague:  "We are not armed, we are acting as citizens, putting
our persons at risk, in order to demonstrate that the democracy of the IMF
and the World Bank is tanks and armed police.  We are not criminals, they
are suppressing citizens exercising their rights.  We want to show that it
is possible to rebel against the order using our bodies as weapons."

If, as Foucault wrote, the body is the object of the power's micro- physics,
if all social and political control exercises its mastery of the body, if
the market economy has converted the body into merchandise, the 'white
monkeys' have called for a "rebellion of bodies" against world power,
reflects Sergio Zulián, one of the organizers.

In the midst of the transformations produced by globalization and
technological changes, in the face of the crisis of alternatives to the
reigning model, in response to the weakening of the State, traditional
parties and the ways of doing classic politicsthe 'white monkeys' have
appeared, who call themselves Italian zapatistas.  This movement is made
up of old autonomous activists (tied to Toni Negri), members of the Ya
Basta Association, young persons from the Social Centers of the main cities
in Italy, ecology groups, campesinos and civil associations.  They are all
promoting a creative form of protest, active civil disobedience.

But where did these activists come from, with their ideas which shatter
traditional political schemes and who show up dressed as if for a
carnival?


The Search For a New Language

"Since Chiapas and Seattle, civil disobedience has become an
international referent, a way of telling millions of people that we want to
live within the new conditions of society, but fighting," said Frederico
Mariani, president of the Ya Basta Association, one of the principal
organizers of the action in Prague.

Although civil disobedience has its history with Gandhi, the civil
rights struggle in the United States in the sixties and in peaceful
statements of protests throughout the world, Frederico Mariani explains
that "after 1994 there was a change.  The zapatistas made a great
contribution with their proposals for building a new politics, without
fighting for power.  We are trying to translate the message and the forms
they are proposing."

"For us," said Mariani - who was one of the 140 Italian observers
expelled from Chiapas in 1998 - "it was a very strong symbol to see an army
of indigenous with empty rifles.  To know an army that was waiting for the
moment it could stop being an army.  People who are fighting for the rights
of their people.  Zapatista women protesting who, under different
conditions, could be compared with the white suits, helmets and shields in
order to protect themselves from police blows and gas.  That is our
referent."

"At the beginning, we discussed previous experiences of direct action,
of sabotage, of revolutionary violence.  We concluded that under the new
conditions of civil disobedience, using our bodies as weapons, we could
unleash the force of those citizens who had not responded to the old
schemes," he emphasized.

"It's an imaginative way," Mariani said, "of involving the other in a
problem.  With peaceful methods of direct action, the language of
violence stays on the side of the police, of governments.  Classic
demonstrations no longer bother them.  On the other hand, now we are
disobeying as citizens, and they suppress, but we are defending ourselves.
That attracts society's attention, which echoes our protest."

Frederico Mariani relates how they began practicing civil disobedience
actions more than a year ago.  "We trained ourselves to resist the
police.  We built shields, we collected old masks, tires to use as barriers,
and we designed protection for the body.  We use the body as a weapon of
political struggle."

"Seattle came, and with it the confirmation of a new movement which had
regained civil society's participation, even though it didn't have a
program yet.  In Italy, until a few years ago, the street fight was a
monopoly of a few ultras who practiced exclusionary methods, groups who
burned cars and broke shop windows.  The majority of the people were
scared to reach that level," he added.

"We added a new factor, a form of radical confrontation which went
beyond classic demonstrations, and which presents us with the possibility of
mass participation with secure methods," summarized Frederico Mariani.

Another of the great successes, Mariani concluded, "is the participation
of young people, who are aware that their intervention with their own
bodies, protected from violence by the police, has clear effects.  The
movement is growing.  This is a great achievement, which the entire world
recognizes, to the point that we were able to take a train to Prague.  Great
spaces are opening up to us.  It's not a political group, it's a horizontal
movement where each person contributes to the debate and to the organization
in a particular way.  Everything is interwoven, there are people of all
ages, everyone is able to share equally.  Old schemes of vanguards and
leaders have fallen."


"When the World is For Sale, Rebelling is Natural"

The 'Prague Spring' of the 'white monkeys' of Rome, Naples, Bologna,
Padua, Milan and other cities, put thousands of bodies and minds in the path
of the illegitimate and unacceptable structures of international powers.  No
one controls them, they answer to no one.  "We made Prague the capital of
alternatives to the prevailing model, of the demands for a different future,
for a new world," wrote the young pierced ones, greñudos and punks of the
Social Centers of Milan in a manifesto distributed in Prague.

"The 'white monkeys,' inspired by the uprising of the indigenous of
Chiapas, have set themselves a new challenge in order to emerge from the
subsoil, and in that way to become involved in society, in order to
promote the self-management and self-organization which has been being built
over these last few years.  In order to move from resistance to a new
offensive in the arena of dreams, of rights, of liberty, for the conquest of
the future, which is being denied to new generations today," they state.

Max, a youth from the Social Center of Padua, reports on the actions
against MacDonald's in Venice, Padua, Rome and Milan, which they took in
order to be in solidarity with José Bové, leader of French campesinos
opposed to globalization.

Massimo, a singer for the rock group 99 Posse, which emerged from the
Social Center of Naples, was in Prague with the Tutte Bianche in order
to bring "our music and our presence to their music."  99 Posse has
participated in many actions in support of Chiapas, for the legalization
of drugs, against fascism and against the repression of immigrants.

Orlando, from the group Milk Warriors, a group of ecologists from Milan,
recounted how they put on a peaceful performance in Prague in front of
the MacDonald's, with corncobs and a flag with the emblem of a cow, in order
to protest against the transgenetic foods being sold by that transnational
company.

"We want to build a humanity in which we are all included, where no one
dies from hunger, where no one suffers injustices," commented Don
Vitaliano, who participates himself in active disobedience, organizing
rock concerts and meetings in the San Miguel convent in Avellino, in support
of immigrant rights, for decriminalization of drugs and against war and
repression.

Vilma Mazza, of Radio Sherwood - an independent radio station
headquartered in Padua which broadcasts in northern Italy - said that the
radio broadcast live from Prague during the days of the protests.  "It's our
way of reporting what was happening to all those who were not able to come,
but who were supporting us."

Vilma, a veteran activist of social struggles in Italy over the last few
decades, explains that the 'white monkeys' movement takes in many
sectors who share these issues of globalization and its effects in Italy.

After more than 20 years of organizing traditional demonstrations,
including some very large ones, she pointed out that these actions had
become stale.  "That's why we went out with the white monkeys, first in
a march for immigrant rights in 1999.  We all confronted the police.  More
than 10,000 demonstrators stayed back, supporting without moving.
Everyone participated from their position.  We confronted in defensive ways,
not offensive ones.  That civil disobedience opened the space for people to
participate who didn't want to confront the police, but everyone defied the
police from their position," Vilma said.

"From that point on," she explained, "we have been carrying out actions
to fight the effects of neoliberalism in our country, from closing the
camps for undocumented migrants in Trieste, Milan and Bologna (to the shout
of 'we are all illegal immigrants'), to protests against transgenetic crops
in Genoa and Venice, opposing the destruction of the environment and the
exploitation of women and men with work flexibility and unstable jobs."

"We have also opened social centers as solidarity spaces for young
people.  We have occupied factories and old buildings in order to provide
shelter there for migrant workers who have no housing.  We have also
supported Albanian war refugees, and we took a boat to the Albanian coast in
order to demand an end to borders and respect for the rights of everyone."

Another struggle which has been being fought of late is against
privatization of public transportation and for its being a free service
for students, the unemployed and pensioners.  And a card for young persons
under the age of 30 which guarantees access to specified services, to
culture and to entertainment.

"In the same way that unemployed French persons assaulted the Paris
Stock Exchange, we have been able to consolidate a new method of the more
traditional political-social struggle, speaking to all of society,
widening the conflict, invading communication channels, restoring a
guarantee to all the excluded of all colors who are today sensing the
fragility of their own future," wrote the 'white monkeys' in their opening
manifesto last year.

The Radio Sherwood presenter explained that thousands of persons in
Europe live excluded, without rights or a dignified life.  That is why they
are now promoting "the right to a universal citizens' salary."  This is
described in a document as "the weapon with which to attack the new
millennium, the ideal demand to move into the battle for the reduction of
work hours, for the right to services and quality of life, for the
redistribution of wealth, in order to give birth to a great liberation
movement of our being.  We are talking about a salary and about free access
to basic services and to culture, for everyone."

"We are next to those who are continuing the struggle begun in San
Cristóbal de Las Casas and Seattle, and which has now reached Prague.
We are talking about the rights of the people as being above the laws of
the market, of the rejection of the myths of public security, and we are
talking about a real society, about horizontal participation, in order
to decide our destiny," was one of the messages they left at the IMF
meeting.
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