The now unbridled power of the police has manifested itself today in a catch that tasted like an assault. Shortly after lunch, under the occupation of 45, Giulio Cesare street, a dozen policemen stopped two men with an exaggerated exercise of force and without paying attention to the precautionary anti-infection measures. The violence of the action was such that it aroused the attention of the people in the area who, although locked in their homes, did not remain silent and many took to the streets. Among them also some comrades who began to rage against that brutality aggravated by the total and contemptuous disregard for the possible contagion. It is precisely those who effectively impose the lockdown and have the complete management of what happens in the streets of the cities that represent a further danger to health, beyond what their role normally grants them. Numerous police and army vehicles arrived as reinforcements and, in the face of a neighbourhood that was clearly hostile to them, began to put pressure on comrades who were thrown to the ground, dragged and taken away.

Dozens and dozens of individuals remained in the street and together with a few sympathizers who arrived later and hundreds of residents at the windows created a real protest.

With incredible speed came the first statements by the city citizen politicians from the right and left who, from the right and the left, compete in a disjointed manner for the title of who, over the years, have invoked the repression of anarchists most tenaciously. It seems clear that they are frightened by scenarios that they cannot even imagine because in Aurora neighbourhood the measure seems to be full and after weeks of forced domicile in narrow apartments, a life now literally reduced to starvation, towards the State and its representatives in uniform are beginning to see unequivocal signs of not forbearance.

In the popular neighbourhoods of the cities this could be just the beginning. In fact, there is news of a group of comrades who, in Milan, in the late afternoon, went from courtyard to courtyard, in the neighborhood of Ticinese, to tell about the events in Turin with a megaphone and that the response from the houses was of heartfelt and noisy solidarity with the arrested comrades.

There is still no certain news of them, we will soon report some updates. In the meantime, the newspapers say that they are under arrest and that forty people have been denounced for violation of the rules envisaged for the current coronavirus pandemic.

What happened today, as we said, seems to be only the beginning and it is no coincidence that it happened on the poorest streets of the city.

Freedom for Giordana, Marifra, Samu and Daniele!
Freedom for everyone!

[Italian text published in macerie.org]

(it-en) Torino, Italia: Indirizzi degli arrestati in corso Giulio Cesare (19/04/2020)