“Likewise we steeped ourselves in La Sacco from the present and urgent necessity of remembering the comrades and experiences of struggle that preceded us, because we are, by our own will, people who continue their aspirations of freedom–the best way of remembering them being to keep forceful the combat against domination. Thus one makes memory into an offensive tool against the forgetting and the silencing that the enemy wants to impose in order to stop the continuity of our fight.”
__________________________________________________________
by Sin Banderas Ni Fronteras, via culmine, translated by war on society:
Defending the experience
of the Sacco and Vanzetti Occupied Social Center and Library
Few autonomous spaces have been as significant in our recent context of anti-authoritarian struggle as the experience of the Sacco and Vanzetti Occupied Social Center and Library (or “La Sacco,” as it was called). We no longer remember the exact day of its opening 10 years ago, but we remember having participated in activities for an anniversary during the days surrounding the middle of January. And we say “participated” because those who form together in the anti-authoritarian propaganda cell Sin Banderas Ni Fronteras [No Flags, No Borders] are participating in various open activities made by the comrades of La Sacco, and because to go to La Sacco only as “attendant” or “spectator” was to not comprehend the importance of protagonistic participation that each individual has in the collective construction of ideas and positions that enrich the space of struggle that we form together.
Today La Sacco is closed. The enemy knows very well how much they gain to take away the rebels’ spaces of discussion, of diffusion of ideas and of collective growth in horizontality and autonomy.
But power also rejoices with our silence and strikes the morale of the insurgent combatants when it vociferates in its press that La Sacco–so popular and defended for a while–is today “a forgotten house.” Clearly this is an offensive strike of psychological war on the part of the enemy, BUT HOW MUCH HAVE WE CONTRIBUTED TO IT WITH OUR SILENCE???
La Sacco was not a center of power, as the enemy still suggested to justify their lies in the Bombs Case. Those who lived and gestated the project of the Sacco and Vanzetti Occupied Social Center and Library were never people who desired to centralize the anti-authoritarian struggle in a single space nor to impose in a single way of confronting power, as some persons suggest with their cowardly “opinions” that do not even reach the position of being ideas since they never dare to defend them face to face, as the compañerxs that we supposedly are. We hope that these persons have realized that to vociferate that the comrades of La Sacco wanted to “centralize the struggle” their opinions align with the theory invented by the enemy about La Sacco as a “center of power.” Nothing more.
One of the most important things that we learned in the qualitative growth that having participated in the activities of the Sacco and Vanzetti Occupied Social Center and Library meant for us is the idea that the struggle against oppression is one continuity of lives and experiences that do not begin with our present action, but is rather a tense and fraternal dialogue between the struggles of the past and the projectualities that we forge today confronting power, with all of the risks and joys this entails.
Likewise we steeped ourselves in La Sacco from the present and urgent necessity of remembering the comrades and experiences of struggle that preceded us, because we are, by our own will, people who continue their aspirations of freedom–the best way of remembering them being to keep forceful the combat against domination. Thus one makes memory into an offensive tool against the forgetting and the silencing that the enemy wants to impose in order to stop the continuity of our fight.
That is one of the motives that animates us to create our project of written propaganda, of taking from the internet and editing our reflections also on paper: keeping alive the tension of anti-authoritarian ideas and posing reflections for the collective discussion contributing to the qualitative and quantitative growth of affinities. Thus we bring ourselves to sharpen the social war against power, with the revolutionary solidarity and the combative memory as offensive tools of our liberation.
While we prepare a second issue of the print publication of our reflections, we remember La Sacco and we make a defense of its experience, grateful and proud of having shared in that house with worthy comrades, among them the now-fugitive comrade Gabriella Curilem. We believe that to remember and to break the silence is a first necessary step to be able to evaluate with its virtues and defects–beyond comfortable and self-defeating criticisms–the importance that la Sacco had and has, along with other autonomous spaces within the recent history and the present of the offensive against power.
There are those who think that to step into an autonomous space today is to burn oneself by the police. To those who say that, these are valid spaces of revolutionary growth and have today much less police surveillance than any given college or university.
Because it is not simply a house that the enemy wants us to forget or ignore, but rather the anti-authoritarian ideas and practices that spread there and that increase our freedom in permanent conflict against all forms of domination.
Thus we call for active solidarity with autonomous spaces and occupied houses that position themselves as a tool in the fight with power.
…Wielding once again the combative memory against the forgetting, silencing and conformism that nourish the enemy…
Sin Banderas Ni Fronteras,
anti-authoritarian cell of agitation and written propaganda.
January 2012.
sinbanderasnifronteras(at)yahoo.com
