We translated our editorial from almost two months ago, which was written soon after a first, successful “March of the Peripheries”, a day in which people from working-class and suburban neighbourhoods rose along housing rights militants and activists to tackle the gruesome Lupi housing plan, preventing people living in housing occupations and squats from accessing basic services and citizenship rights.
As the Lupi minister himself was forced to resign after his associate Ettore Incalza – a longtime state manager which did supervise great unnecessary works’ projects such as the TAV high-speed railway – was prosecuted for corruption, a second march of dignity approaches in Bologna and other initiatives are developing in other cities, to reaffirm the people dignity against the neoliberal austerity and the individualist dogma of the Renzi government.
The struggle for housing rights gave an important message on January 31. A real mobilization that featured thousands of people taking the streets all over the country. It was able to address the social composition that lives in the housing occupations as well as those many characters – both involved in the politics of housing and in the more general and inclusive debate on the city and its criticism – that ended up at its side in the streets and in the squares. [Read More]