Anomalous Wave

Here’s a rough translation of the report from the third workshop of the national assembly of Onda (15-16 November at Sapienza, Rome).

Third workshop: Research, Education and Work

In the third workshop of the national assembly we discussed the themes of research, education and work.

All the institutional interventions of the last 15 years have aimed to destructure the public university system: reforms on didactics, cuts of funding, the block of turn-over, transformation of universities into private foundations.

However we want to clarify that The Wave is not defending a system that doesn’t function. The responsability belongs to those have managed the university with corporative and clientelistic mechanisms; to those who by hierarchizing the university suffocate research. The responsability belongs to those who have constructed a system founded on generalized exploitation of precarious labor; to those who have accepted the idea of drastically restricting the access to quality public education.

Because of this we feel that in this phase, in the profound crisis of the neoliberal model, there’s an urgent need for a university capable of contributing to the construction of a new and more just model of development. Our point of departure is the analysis of the research concretely produced by our universities and institutes, of how this interacts with the territory, the creation of critical knowledge, and the multiplication of experiences of self-education (autoformazione) and alternative didactics which we have been producing in our mobilizations.

 This analysis has brought up a set of guidelines:

1. Independence and autonomy of research are the foundational principles for us. Research must not be subordinate to market logics nor put into service of private interests. Knowledge is a collective product, and as such, it is not appropriable. Free research cannot exist without autonomous and independent researchers, therefore the access to funds for non structured researchers and PhD students is a fundamental condition for us.

2. The autonomy of research and the quality of the public university require a new concept for valuation. (…) We think that valuation should be seen also as social account of the university system in its entirety. We also underline that docents, researchers and PhD students should be involved in the processes of valuation.

3. The problem of income is certainly concerns the whole living body of the university: PhD students and precarious researchers.
There should be an adequate salary that corresponds to the research work, and constitutional workers’ rights. All work must be contractual. The continuity of income must be guaranteed, and it must be extended to all precarious workers.

4. Adequate didactical paths and the right to economic autonomy must be guaranteed to all doctors (…)

5. We underline our firm opposition to the block of turn-over. But this is not enough for us: we demand the institution of a single contract of subordinate work (…) a contract which would substitute the current jungle of precarious "contracts" (…)

6. Precarious researchers and PhD students are completely absent from the decision-making bodies. Like every other category, they should participate in the decision-making processes through elected representatives.

7. The Wave has already gone beyond national borders. In Europe there have been solidarity demonstrations for the Italian movement,.
We want to underline that there doesn’t exist any european space of research yet. The movement must start creating it through the circulation of ideas and struggles.

8. In research, the question of gender remains open, the question which we find everywhere in the world of work: on one hand, the career development of women is strongly filtered to lower levels, on the other hand women suffer from the old biological blackmail in which motherhood becomes the way of expulsion from the world of research.

9. Self-reform (autoriforma) is above all a shared path of struggles.
This workshop expressed a multiplicity of roads which can be traversed on local and national level. But we think that even more roads will come out from the fantasy of this movement, from the force of participation that it is creating, from the capacity to experiment with new paths. The movement must last, we know that our struggle will take long time, but we also know that, at least for this country, it’s a great occasion and a great hope.

On Tuesday, 25 November at the university of Pisa, the rector and his administrative board approved the budget for 2009. During the decision making the university was militarized.

The budget was criticized by students and precarians of the university, because it adjusts to the law 133 without any resistance.

People wanted to intervene in the discussion and protested outside the administration building. Digos (the political police) and regular cops clashed with students. A few students got injured.

"Some accuse us of violence, but we are convinced that the only violence today was done by those who decided to approve the budget, avoiding any public debate and hiding behind the forces of order."

This info is from the Uniriot website once again. 

There’s a booklet about The Wave in English available online:

The Anomalous Wave so far: The Education Rebellion in Italy
http://www.uniriot.org/downloads/anomalouswave.pdf

Looks like they have used some stuff from my blog too. Cool!

This text has been produced (in a bit of a rush) in solidarity with the Wave by some people in and around 56a Infoshop in London. We asked our Italian friend in Paris (aquiestoy.noblogs.org) to write something about the character of the movement and what he sent to us forms the main basis of this text. We’ve taken a few liberties with their text by adding in some details here and there and by also adding on news of some of the more recent events. The history of the Wave (after the explanation of the Gelmini Law) was entirely added by us. We also added the Translators Notes and Appendix 1 and 2.

56a Infoshop is a long-standing social centre living and breathing in South London since 1991. We sell books, papers, t-shirts and music. We also have a massive openaccess archive. But we do not spend our lives in theoretical mode – we also like to act against the pressing conditions of the world as we find it right now. In this sense, this booklet is offer support and aid to the Wave in Italy but to aid and encourage action here in support of own our desires and revolutions.

November 20th 2008

Email: info@56a.org.uk (for further copies / criticism / solidarity etc)

A 17-year-old student died in a high school in Rivoli near Torino. The roof crashed down.

Uniriot website criticizes the government for not taking any responsability, not even admitting the fact that public schools are in awful condition. It has not taken any measures to change this, on the contrary: it will go on with the plans to cut down funding of public schools. This will make the situation even worse.

"Enough with cuts on our schools, enough with cuts on our universities! We have been shouting this, and we will continue to do so, bitterly aware of the fact that cuts cause death, as this case shows us. On 28 November we’ll be at piazza with all the rage against death."

La Repubblica reports about the demonstration against male violence against women, which took place in Rome today. Organizers say there were more than 50.000 people.

"The demonstration was also an occasion to protest against the decree law on prostitution signed by minister Carfagna (the law criminalizes prostitutes and imposes rules of ‘decent’ behaviour for everybody; we, instead, we are indecently free) and against the school plan of minister Gelmini (which is authoritarian and racist)." 

This is stolen from a message written by someone else.

on nov 29 all of italian public education system will take it to streets once again, starting with teachers, children, parents and arriving at university students and precarious researchers. what’s noteworthy is that also high school students (in many ways the forerunner of the onda) have started holding lessons in public squares as universities have been doing in the past few weeks

dec 12: GENERAL STRIKE called halfheartedly (and for halfaday) by CGIL, italy’s largest (socdem) union now deserted by the other two mainstream unions, especially CISL which has turned into a bedfellow of mr b, while CUB-COBAS-SdL have called it for the whole day. It’s because of the students that this general strike has become possible. And they will be the bulk of the people on the streets that day, also the recurrence of the piazza fontana carnage.

News from Rome: the incident of Piazza Navona of 29 October is now being processed by the magistrate. That day, during an authorized demonstration against the Gelmini decree, a fight broke out. A group of neofascists entered the piazza, armed with sticks, prepared to attack the demonstrators.

Now, the magistrate has presented its hypothesis: it was not an attack, but a symmetrical fight between two groups. And therefore, 15 university students have been summoned to court. This is so obvious distortion of facts, it’s almost unbelievable. This reminds of the case from last spring, when a group of neofascists attacked students at the entrance of Sapienza: also in this case, the magistrate (and the media) tried to make it look like "a clash between opposite extremisms".

Today at Sapienza, there was a press conference about the incident and the process, organized by students themselves.  "These days we’ll keep on saying ‘we are not afraid’: not afraid to affirm the antifascist quality of this movement, and not afraid of these summons. We are not afraid of a government which tries to intimidate and criminalize us with these accusations. We are not afraid, and therefore we’ll keep on producing moments of conflict and protest with intelligence and with determination, which have characterized us until now."

Pro-Gelmini folks have put out a calendar with 12 female students from Emilia posing nude or semi-nude "to give their support for the Gelmini decree". No joke.

On Tuesday evening, there were about 15.000 people in the open-air concert at Sapienza. This was a suprise for the organizers, who had put up posters and advertised for the concert only on Monday. People were asked to pay 2 euros to support the struggle, and inside there were people selling beer and drinks to raise money. There was a proper stage constructed behind Rettorato, near the grass area. The artists expressed their support for the movement, and the organizers held speeches in between music.

Some pictures here and here. 

In Onda, the student movement, there’s an initiative to participate in the national demonstration against male violence against women. The demo takes place in Rome this Saturday, 22 November.

At Sapienza, "Women in the Wave" have written a call in which they explain why this demonstration is important. They emphasize that in the current movement, women have been protagonists right from the beginning. The protest against the Gelmini decree was started by female teachers and mothers. They point out that discrimination of women in the labor market is particularly strong in Italy.

The call emphasizes the need to bring discussion about gender issues to schools and universities. "We don’t believe that knowledge is neutral, we don’t believe there is equality between genders, when at the university it’s evident how women almost never get to the top positions in the power hierarchy". Female docents are a minority. In the official didactics at the university there’s no discussion about gender issues. "It is necessary to construct moments of self-education (autoformazione) through which to construct different knowledges".

The call also criticizes the way women’s body has been instrumentalized to support securitarian politics: criminalization of prostitution, militarization of streets, criminalization of migrants. The call presents some concrete demands too. "We want a welfare that enables women’s independence. We want counselling in all the schools and universities, and education which speaks about sexuality starting from the elementary schools."