Update 7.30 pm
The solidal picket beneath the Ex-Telecom building keeps growing in numbers, reaffirming that no one will leave without a satisfying solutions for all the occupiers.
Update 6.05 pm
After an assembly on the roof the occupiers deemed acceptable the proposal made by the social workers, that promise housing for everyone. They swore to debate as soon as they get down the roof in order to assess whether the proposal can be deemed satisfactory enough. Meanwhile the supporting picket that was called in front of the Ministry of Infrastructures in Porta Pia was charged. Water cannons were used in order to disperse the crowd. A youngster that fell ill was carried away in an ambulance, another one is at the hospital. The use of water cannons even destroyed some traffic lights. There were charges also against the supporting picket in Alessandria, in a day of struggle for housing rights that is getting recognized all over the country.
Update 5.45 pm
The resistance continues: after ten hours the occupiers are still inside the Ex-Telecom building and on the roof, with the firemen that find it hard to accelerate their operations, while the picket covers multiple sides of the building and the antiriot police keeps guarding the entrance in big numbers.
Update 4:15pm
The eviction operations keep following each other and there are news about an occupier with her jaw crushed by the kicks of the antiriot police, resistance continues outside and inside the building. The Eat The Rich network promotes a support dinner at 8.30 pm this evening in front of the picket. This long day is also featuring the protagonism of the occupiers of Via Mario De Maria and Mura di Porta Galliera squats, that were there since early morning that strongly relaunched the Social Log city march next saturday.
Update 3.30 pm:
The firemen are entering the Ex-telecom building aiming to try reaching those resisting on the roof! Men women and children are not giving up an inch..that is their home!
Update 2:15 pm
Antiriot police wear helmets inside the ExTelecom building and snatches children from their parents making their way through with truncheons! A child with respiratory problems was taken away in an ambulance, meanwhile children keep getting separated from their moms.
1.30 pm update
Lunch starts both on the roof and at the picket, where the many supporters that rushed to via Fioravanti are actually playing out a true display of solidarity, setting up banquets distributing tea and biscuits in addition to pasta dishes. The situation remains in a standstill, with the occupiers that resist, in the absence of any credible resolution of the question advanced by the institutions; of course no one agrees to leave a home, that they strived for such a long time to gain and live in the past year, lacking any real solutions! Also the education sector in Bologna, starting from the Partigiani della Scuola Pubblica radical teacher council, mobilizes against the eviction, also relaunching the struggle against the art.5 of housing plan that prevents the occupying children to attend school; from the university in struggle against the new ISEE parameter a supporting march directed to via Fioravanti arrives; some students of the IC7 primary school joined the picket in solidarity with their classmate Mohamed, that is inside the Ex Telecom building at the moment. Meanwhile solidarity events were also called in Brescia, Alessandria and Rome. The call is still the same: getting to the picket, expressing solidarity in any way!
11.30 am update:
A solidarity sit-in was called in front of the Prefecture in Piazza della Libertà in Alessandria for 5.30pm. Voices from the Ex Telecom roof report on the vitality of the resistance and the importance of taking on collectively and in every form the defence of the via Fioravanti building! For any videos follow the fb page of Social Log Bologna, to whoever is in the city: please come to support the ongoing resistance, which does not want to give up at all!
11 am update:
Solidarity starts to arrive from many Italian cities. A solidal event is scheduled in Brescia this evening at 6pm in front of the Prefecture in Piazza Paolo VI. In Rome a sit-in was launched for 5.30pm in Porta Pia with all the occupations in the capitol that expose banners inciting to resist, while messages of complicity come from all the national housing struggle movement, in the context whose importance is surging on a national level. The situation is now at a standstill, the resistance on the roof continues while the picket, whose numbers are increasingly larger, communicates with chants together with those inside the will of keeping going on. Cacerolazos of the occupying children inside the building are being matched by the many children of the other occupations that arrive in order to support the picket, from the roof the battle to give a future to this great event of struggle continues!
10 am update:
The resistance on the roof continues, while a deafening cacerolazo is going on, both inside and outside the ExTelecom at the supporting picket that grows more and more. A comrade was hospitalized, carried by the ambulance that managed to reach the picket only after a lot of time, as the traffic blockade that followed the eviction operations is paralyzing the area. Two comrades were wounded on their hands and head during the charges, while the social workers inside the Ex-Telecom – helped by an aggressive police – after getting over their initial, false whining try to intimidate the resistance, threatening consequences for the occupiers in the case of non compliance with the (non-)solutions that are being proposed. Some policemen told women and children of getting away from the “delinquents” that resist on the roof, getting a stong refusal and a further growth in the resistance against an unacceptable eviction in return!
9 am update:
A second charge broke against the supporters’picket in via Fioravanti, causing at least two wounded, leaving blood on the ground but failing to move out of the way the picket, that we still keep inviting to join. It is the police that nervously advances, trying to erase any public and tangible sign of solidarity towards the occupiers that resist on the roof while the police inside reached the moms and the little children and starts to intimidate them. On the roof the resistance advances…
At about 7 am today a massive police apparatus blocked both sides of the ex-Telecom in via Fioravanti, Bologna, in order to proceed with the eviction operations of the building, occupied on December 4, 2014, that hosts hundreds of people that cannot afford a house anymore because of the crisis. The resistance of the occupiers immediately started, as about 150 of them climbed on the roof and from above they encourage the solidal picket that immediately gathered in order to support the effort against a repressive act that perfectly accounts a misery of the management of housing emergency that is not aimed to resolve problems, but rather to keep producing them. After some dozens of meters the picket was charged by the police forces that want to prevent any kind of active solidarity to those bringing the resistance on the roof. During the charges the hand of a supporter was wounded and probably broken after the brutality of the police intervention. We invite everyone to join the picket in via Fioravanti, immediately close to the Ex Telecom and support in any possible way the effort of those resisting on the roofs!
