from ainfos

There has been much talk about the Italian group
YaBasta--and even imitations!--in anarchist circles. And
while it should be clear to anyone paying attention that
YaBasta (a.k.a. "Movement in White Overalls") isn't an
anarchist organization, the problems with YaBasta go
much deeper. Not only does YaBasta openly dialogue and
work with the state (including supporting and running
candidates in elections), but they even collude with the
state to suppress anarchists and anarchist projects. Yet it is
not only YaBasta as a particular organization that
anarchists should be wary of, but as a method of
organization and a model of struggle--the focus of most
anarchists' acritical jubilation--YaBasta is highly
problematic. They have explicitly moved away from
self-organization and towards politics, away from
conflictual action towards mediated, public spectacles
(often arranged with the police in advance). Thus we
include the article below to clarify where YaBasta stands in
relation to the state, anarchists, and social revolution. But
don't take our word for it, look at the quotes from YaBasta
themselves at the end of the article.UNMASK SIMULATIONS IN WHITE OVERALLS

The birth of the so-called "Movement in White Overalls"
traces back to 1998, when the Social Centers referring to
the "Charter of Milan" decided to break away--in their
image as well--from the rest of the antagonist movement
that didn't adopt the political positions expressed in that
document.

The "Charter of Milan" welled up in an assembly held in
that town on September 19, 1998, at the Leoncavallo Social
Center. It appears to be the converging point of various
paths within the area of social centers, such as Leoncavallo,
the "Melting" of social centers in North-East Italy (Padua,
Venice-Mestre etc.) and some in Rome (Corto Circuito,
Forte Prenestino). Later on centers of Liguria and Marche
also flowed in.

The paths followed weren't on the whole homogeneous, but
had been growing in the former period around the tendency
marked by militants seeking re-definition and a new
political role; the practice was carried out through
connections with the institutional "left" as well as with
sectors of volunteer associations, catholic ones in
particular. At the same time negotiations had been
undertaken with mayors--right-wing ones as well--to obtain
political recognition, and legalize squatted centers with the
claim that they were offering public services and
entertainment, organized through social cooperatives, tied
to the "non-profit" sector.

In Mestre (Venice) in particular, negotiations resulted in
the town-council purchasing the squatted center "Rivolta"
--formerly a factory--at the approx. cost of 1 million US$
paid with public funds, favored by Benetton's economic
group, followed by legalization. Such a political
"turn"--applauded both on left-wing press and TV--was
then presented as the consequence of a theoretical revision
assuming that the period of class struggle and communist
subversion had expired, recognizing a not well defined
"civil society" as a new interlocutor, and pointing out as a
strategic goal a "conflictive reform of welfare" through the
claiming of universal rights, in the first place "citizen's
revenue".

In order to support these views, the social centers of the
Milan Charter discovered a queer federalism: municipalism
and self-government were no longer seen as radical
alternatives for social self organization, but rather as a
"new" model of democratic participation and political
representation within institutions such as local
administrations. Thus Leoncavallo ended up supporting a
Christian Democrat like Martinazzoli running to be elected
mayor of Milan. While peeping from behind the flag of
neo-zapatism, the next step was participation of members
of this area in local elections in the ranks of the Green
Party or Rifondazione Comunista with an attitude
expressing all but opposition to the center-left
governments. Luca Casarini, a spokesman (but really,
leader) of the W.O. was assigned as advisor of Livia Turco,
minister of Social Affairs whose name is bound to the law
that introduced concentration "kamps" for paperless or
non legalized immigrants, waiting for expulsion. Since
1998, as a consequence of this "new" political course, a
deep rupture has taken place within the antagonist
movement, with on the one side W.O. more and more
involved in institutional and social-democratic context; on
the other, social centers, squatts and experiences of social
and syndicalist self-organization that keep their points of
reference in "Autonomia di Classe" or the variegated
expressions of anarchism ranging from squatters to the
Anarchist Federation (FAI). During street
demonstrations, one item occurred to worsen
fractures--so-called "civil disobedience". On more than one
occasion it appeared plainly that some clashes between
W.O. and police had been agreed beforehand, as denounced
in the daily-paper "il Manifesto" (Feb. 1, 2000) in an article
by Livio Quagliata titled "Urban guerrilla? But please!".
Moreover, on several occasions and different places
(Bologna, Aviano, Treviso, Trieste, Venice, Rovigo), W.O.
have been responsible of physical aggressions, threats and
informer behavior against autonomous, anarchists,
revolutionary communists and other sections of the
movement for self organization who reject political
hegemony that W.O. pretends to impose on the entire
opposition movement with the complicity of the media.

---Sandra K.

STATEMENTS AND INTERVIEWS

"The State isn't anymore the enemy to throw down, but the
counterpart with whom we had to discuss things."
(Interview of Luca Casarini, leader of the W.O.,
supplement of the daily Il Gazzettino, 23 April 1998).

"...Excuse us, comrades, but for us your intransigence
regarding principles and refusal of any mediation with the
institutions are more binded to anarchist thinking and
populist maximalism, like that of the former left wing
organization Lotta Continua, than to our political
formation of activists. There is nothing wrong with it, just
clear up the question. Do allow us just to observe that the
neo-anarchists propagandists of the direct action and the
fundamentalist and orthodox neo-communists have in
common the same extremism in pseudo-revolutionary
language." (taken from the declaration "Camminiamo
interrogandoci", written by Radio Sherwood in Padova,
responding at the Movimento Antagonista Toscano,
october 1996 ).

"In the North East part of the country in the social centres,
we have produced new cadres, serious people like Luca
Casarini. They are ours or aren't they!? Now some social
centres are orienting themselves as an independent
enterprise. They have Cacciari (the Mayor of Venice) as an
intelligent interlocutor, they are thinking as a democratic
lobby" (Interview of Fausto Bertinotti, secretary of
Rifondazione Comunista Party, in Il Manifesto of 16 July
1998).

"The day that they won't call us anymore "autonomi" will
be a feast [...] Ideology has been outrun" (Interview of Max
Gallob, spokesman of the social centre Pedro in Padova in
the daily Il Gazzettino of 15 march 2000).

"A Davos we have, along with Josef Bove, the leader of the
French farmers, taken the megaphone inviting to isolate
those who were chopping windows. We did succeed, with
the help of the youngsters of the social centres of Mestre
[...] I did meet the boys of the social centres of Mestre and
Padova who were taken by Manconi (ex-secretary of the
Green Party). I spoke with them, I told them that at the
first violent action they would been chased away; after that
I did listen to their reasoning. As a matter of fact in Davos
they stood at our side, they didn't throw any molotovs".
(Interview of Grazia Francescato, parliamentary and leader
of the Green party in the daily Corriere della Sera of 25
may 2000).

"In the antique shop we find the remains of revolutionary
traditions that passed by in the history of the XXth century:
the communist one, the anarchist, the workerist and other
ones. Let's look at them , disillusioned because of what they
are: fragments of a time passed by that, with all their
splendor and misery, victories and defeats, can't return
anymore, can't be reconstructed" (from an statement on
line by the redaction of Radio Sherwood, spring 2000).