For more than a year, the men and women of the city of Vicenza have been fighting against the construction of a gargantuan new US military structure which we do not want built either here or anywhere else. Our battle has brought together people from diverse political and cultural backgrounds with their own unique modes of expression and history. The roots of this struggle arise from the need to defend our homes, a determined NO to all war which is only a source of tragedy and hardship, and a call for peace. The politicians throughout this episode have tried to impose a choice to which the majority of locals remain strongly opposed. Both the left and the right have decided to go over the heads of the voters.


Defending public goods and our territory, NO to war, and a new form of democracy and participation in the decision making process, autonomy from “olitics”: these have been, for the Permanent Barracks against the military base at Dal Molin, our guiding stars to steer our course. Along with men and women from all over Italy, we have organized protests that have involved hundreds of thousands of people. We started in our own neighborhoods, just a few of us in the silence and we have succeeded in bringing this debate to the national level. The festival we recently organized to re-launch our fight against the base was attended by at least 30,000 people. But we know that this is not enough, that we have bring the fight beyond national boundaries. We have met, through this journey, realities similar to our own, throughout Europe. We encountered various forms of resistance and people trying to protect their public patrimony, their territory; there were associations, movements and committees fighting against the creation of new military structures and this insane process of re-armament. Throughout we have seen a total lack of democratization in the decision making process. Like a single script, from Holland to Heathrow from Warsaw to the Czech Republic, people are fighting against governments which continue to move away from their citizenry and impose decisions from above that are not shared by the voters.

Now we want to cross new boundaries. We know that it is possible to build a common ground between the various movements which despite differences all have the common goal of bringing decision making power to the hands of the people. We don’t want create a synthesis or simplification nor do we want the individuality of each movement to be lost. On the contrary we want to build a network that will be able to take advantage of the richness and diversity of each movement. We have always worked to create spaces that include rather than exclude to increase participation rather than limit it.

We are convinced that today Europe can be both a space across which our movements can move autonomously to produce concrete results in the struggle. The permanent barracks against Dal Molin has chosen the 14th, 15th and 16th of December in Vicenza for an European initiative, with a protest march on Saturday the 15th by the citizens of Europe against the Dal Molin project. Over the course of three days we want to share our experiences and compare them to those of others facing similar problems. There will be discussions and debates about stopping war, defending our territories, defending public goods to try to understand how we can work together to confront these crises and how to bring the democratic process back to the people.


To organize this event, we will start building this European forum through an organizational meeting at the end of October to better prepare for the bigger meeting in December.


For information, please write to international@nodalmolin.it or info@nodalmolin.it


Peace

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