At dawn this morning – July 9, 2024 – the former occupied wash-house in Corso Benedetto Brin 21 in Turin was evicted and subjected to a search. During the eviction, various materials were seized for investigative purposes.
Bombastic media fanfares communicate the eviction of the “den of violent anarchists” and the politicians on duty congratulate themselves on the umpteenth eviction, while workers at the service of the police and the municipality wall up and smash the building, giving it back to abandonment and oblivion.
The Ex Lavatoio was occupied on December 9, 2022 as part of a citizen mobilization in response to the eviction of the Edera Squat. In those months, many considered it essential to claim and practice the instrument of occupation – certainly not that of municipal bargaining and co-planning tables – so, in solidarity with the comrades of the Edera, three occupations were born one after the other (Ex-Lavatoio occupato, Polisportiva Occupata Iris Versari, Circolo Occupato La Crepa).
The Ex Lavatoio was an instrument of struggle.
A tool to be in the city, in its neighborhoods and in its streets. A tool for cultivating alliances capable of wedged into the fractures of the present with the heart stretched out to subvert the order of things and its suffocating everyday life marked by the rhythms of neoliberal capitalism.
From the Ex Lavatoio we organized ourselves to fight against prisons, against CPRs, alongside Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike against 41bis and life imprisonment and next to the inmates in revolt in administrative detention centers.
In that place we gave ourselves the opportunity to build paths of struggle with those who suffer the violence of borders, systemic racism and detention. We went out of that space into the street, because it is in the street that we want to be, where the contradictions of the present are revealed in their brutal violence, where the construction of the internal enemy in a war and genocidal landscape is shown in its evidence.
We are not interested today in crying over yet another walled place, although it seems necessary to remember how, once again, power has shown itself in the city to split, weld and cement yet another place to be destined for abandonment or speculation.
What we want to reiterate today is that while a genocide is underway sent to world vision, through which the concept of internal enemy is normalized, built around those who place themselves, by choice or by necessity, on the margins of a world determined by the logic of neoliberal capitalism and its value paradigms; while justicialist and criminogenic mechanisms are reinforced, reaffirming the hard fist of the punitive and prison power to be imposed on those who are labeled as enemies; while this is happening, not only is it decided here in Turin to wall up an occupied place, but investments are being made to renovate a new prison for people without European documents.
It is now known to most that the renovation works of the CPR in Corso Brunelleschi are underway and that the reopening is imminent.
That place, closed by the courage of the rebels, MUST NOT REOPEN. From that courage and power of revolt, many comrades of the Ex Lavatoio have drawn inspiration, strength and food for thought to fight.
Sequestering and walling up a space, that space, will not put an end to these struggles. Like the many-headed hydra, when one of them is cut off, two sprout in its place. Attempts to eradicate the struggle for freedom will only strengthen it.
Against jails and CPR.
In solidarity with the people revolting in prison.
With our hearts to Jamal, deported by the State, our comrade who could not be with us today.
Solidarity and love for prisoners.
A smile to the neighbors who supported us and who told the cops without hesitation what they had to say.
Free Palestine!
Ex Lavatoio Occupato, Turin
https://squ.at/r/9f8d
Some squats in Turin: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/torino/city/torino/squated/squat
Some groups in Turin: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/torino
Some squats in Italy: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/IT/country/IT/squated/squat
Some events in Italy: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/IT
