Walden Bello:
© The Nation Magazine, July 20, 2001
The Battle of Genoa
The police van came careening down the Via Giovanni Tomaso
Invrea, moving crazily from
one side of the narrow street to the other in pursuit
of protesters. I flattened myself against the wall, and
it missed me by two feet. Another six inches and it would
have mowed down the man in front of me. "
Asesino, asesino," people screamed as the vehicle stopped
a few yards away. A bald carabineri
opened the door and glared at us.
Everything happened so quickly. Just twenty-five minutes
before, at around 2:15 pm, a column of
around 8,000-10,000 people, led by the famed specialists
in civil disobedience the Tute Bianche, were
marching down the Via Tolemaide, with marshalls using
megaphones announcing, "This is a nonviolent march.
We believe in nonviolence." The goal of the marchers was
to reach the twenty-foot wall of iron that the
authorities had erected around the Group of Eight meeting
site at the Piazza Ducale about two kilometers away.
They never reached the wall. At the foot of the hill, at
the intersection with Via Corsino,
carabineri hidden in a small side street started firing
tear gas in an unprovoked attack that
scattered the advance ranks of the march where there were
many reporters and television
crews.
The Battle of Genoa had begun.
Throughout the next four hours, the battle unfolded in
the narrow sidestreets and the small
piazzas of the Corso Torino area, with the battle lines
shifting constantly. The police would
attack with teargas, vans and armored personnel carriers.
The protesters would retreat,
then come back with stones and bricks ripped from the
pavement. Huge trash bins were
turned over to serve as barricades. "Genova Libera! Genova
Libera!" would erupt from
the crowd everytime the police were forced back.
At 4:20 pm, I had my first glimpse of an injured man being
carried away by the first aid
personnel of the Tute Bianche. It was at around the same
time that one person was shot
dead by carabineri in the same vicinity. Ambulance sirens
blared constantly. Later I would
find out that about 150 people had been injured during
the day--about fifty of them being
members of the media.
I also learned later that there were acts of civil disobedience
throughout the day, the most
dramatic apparently being that of a woman from the so-called
"Pink Bloc" of marchers
who tried to scale the steel wall to place grappling hooks
on it, only to be hosed down
brutally by the police when she had got nearly to the
top.
Unfortunately, the anarchists--the so-called "Black Bloc"--were
also around. Despite
efforts by mainstream demonstrators to dissuade them with
dramatic pleas for nonviolence,
they went about burning a couple of cars, including an
Alfa Romeo. They also moved
down Genoa's beautiful seafront drive, the Corso Italia,
selectively breaking
windows--breaking those of banks and car companies while
leaving those of restaurants
untouched. "Capitalism kills" with an anarchist logo alongside
was painted on walls.
Many protesters were very upset about the antics of the
few hundred anarchists in a global
assembly of about 100,000 people. Fabio Bellini, a 25-year-old
Genoan, told me: "It is
right to demonstrate against the G-8. It's right to fight
for a better world, and that's why I'm
here. But I don't understand the window breaking. I'm
sad for Genoa." Pam Foster, the
coordinator of the Halifax Initiative in Canada, asked:
"Why did the police go after
peaceful demonstrators but take their time dealing with
the anarchists?"
The antics of the Black Bloc were the subject of many passionate
debates when the
protesters streamed back to the convergence center at
Piazza Kennedy at dusk. Observing
one of these spontaneous arguments, Han Soeti of Indymedia-Belgium
commented, "There
are reports that instead of arresting anarchists, the
police were escorting some of them to
critical areas. I heard the same thing in Prague and Barcelona."
It is, however, for the new Italian Prime Minister, Silvio
Berlusconi, that the protesters,
both Italian and non-Italian, reserve their greatest anger.
During the struggle at the Corso
Torino, Gino Pierantoni, another Genoese, told me, "I
don't know where you will find truth
in this mess. But I am sure that a great part of the blame
rests with this man, who really is
incapable of leading this country." Berlusconi is regarded
as having militarized the situation,
going against the moves of the local government, which
tried to accommodate the protest
movement. A retired Italian general who headed the United
Nations peacekeeping force in
Beirut in the seventies summed up the feelings of many
Italians when he commented that he
did not know why Berlusconi assigned 20,000 carabineri
to Genoa when he only needed
2500 troops to keep the peace in the whole of Beirut.
As in Seattle, Washington, DC, and Prague, organizers of
what has been the biggest
anti-globalization protest so far are worried that the
street battles and the antics of the
anarchists might overshadow the message that they wanted
to deliver to the G-8.
Over several months, the Genoa Social Forum was able to
line up about 600 groups
behind a pledge of non-violence. It also sponsored a week-long
teach-in, involving
international speakers, with topics ranging from "Who
Needs Trade Liberalization?" to
"Mechanisms for Global Democracy" to "Alternatives to
Globalization." Among those who
delivered talks were anti-globalization gurus Susan George,
a critic of neoliberalism, and
Jose Bove, better known as the man who dismantled a McDonalds
restaurant.
The G-8, however, was deaf to the protests on the streets.
While Berlusconi delivered a
carefully crafted statement saying he was "saddened" by
the death of the demonstrator, he
also said it was not connected to the G-8. To add insult
to injury, the G-8, on the evening
on July 20, issued a statement in which it encouraged
the launching of a new round of trade
negotiations in Quatar. Opposition to a new round and
the World Trade Organization was
what had brought thousands of people from all over Europe
and the world to Genoa.