On the occasion of the International Worker’s day, the Commitee of Irregular Workers, started up the the last 25th of March, arranged a meeting at the railway station of Reggio Emilia with those invisibles and without documents, to demonstrate on the streets of the city where they want to work and live.
“We want to live here and not only survive” – said the participants of the demonstration, in a city which is mostly engaged in studying ways and strategies of controlling instead of listening to the voices of those who are forced to live on the fringe of the society, who are forced to illegal working because they don’t have a permit of stay, who are not payed and those who in exchange for the salary receive frequently a slap.
The procession of demonstrators showed an unpleasent picture, that of the Schengen Europe, of the Europe with cemetery borders, of the Europe with the CPT (Temporary Stay Centre), of the Europe of exploitation of clandestine labour, but they also showed us the pictures of the movements, which involved lots of cultures with great courage, filling the streats in order to emerge from the invisibility, to claim citizenship and an immediate sanatoria.
“The first step – according to the organizers – can be only that of an extended regularization, which is not taken into consideration by the new government bill Amato-Ferrero.
The voices of the demonstrators exclude any doubt and they are a continuous claim of existance to all intents and purposes: integral part of the society, not only as workers but also and above all as citizens, as human beings: “We clandestines are the ones to talk now. We are tired. Today is our day of freedom. Today we have to stand up and be able to walk in our world; we need to be free. The freedom is ours. We have come to Reggio Emilia to work, not to sell drugs. We need to work and before this we need the permit of stay in order to be able to work. We have to be part of the Italian society. We are tired of beeing controlled. We are tired of having to sell drugs. We are tired of having to work illegaly. We have to assert ourselves and today has to be the end of illegal working. This is how we claim to be regularized in the Italian society, regularize us for our freedom”.
The day of the 1st of May has been a great brave and determined step of the Committee of Irregular Workers which revealed the politics that see migrants as object of controls in their apartments, of roundups and of speculations on their backs. The procession of demonstrators requested that all this had to end. “Enough with controls, enough with roundups, enough with speculations, illegal working cannot be defeated by expulsion of clandestine workers but by gnving them a chance to regularize themselves and to live a worthy life, a right of every human being”.
During the last 15 years trading associations and political classes of Reggio Emilia tried to develop building trade, transforming it into the dragging force of the local economy. Urban civic politics adjusted themselves to this tendency allowing an abnormal development of this branch. All this resulted in strong contradictions regarding the right to own a house, opening the way to commerce and speculations.
The other side of the story concerns the ones who are building the buildings by using clandesine low-price illegal labour, workers being forced to live with the constant threat of the roundups of the police, in abandoned houses or, in the luckiest cases, crowded up in an apartment bedroom paying a bed at a high price.
It is obvious that this circuit at high profit would not function without these new invisible citizens, real slaves of contemporary economy.
The day of 1st May marked the beginning of a self-organized fight of the same irregular workers to claim the extension of the rights of citizenship to all.
Listen to the interventions that took place on the square
Listen to the interview with the Commitee of Irregualr Workers
Look at the Video of the demonstration, by Global Project Reggio Emilia
Federica Zambelli
Editorial Office Melting Pot Reggio Emilia