Porto Marghera - The last firebrands

"Porto Marghera - The last firebrands"


The winter 2006/07 issue of the German Wildcat magazine features a DVD and booklet documenting a historical experience of autonomous workers' organisation in the industrial area around Venice, Italy in the late 60s and early 70s. Unlike most of the more or less academic historical documentations of Italian Operaism, which tend to focus mainly on the leading organisations and figures, in the 2004 documentary the worker-activists themselves talk about their experiences. Wildcat and friends subtitled the documentary in German, English and Polish (the original is in Italian plus French subtitles). Soon there will be an improved version with subtitles also in Slovakian, Turkish, Romanian. In addition they put together a very detailed booklet containing more historical analysis and interviews which will soon be available in English. Amongst others, the following characteristics and problems of this particular phase of class struggle are still important to debate and tackle today: - The workers at Porto Marghera fought for better working conditions and at the same time against the damaging impact of the chemical industry and of work itself. The split between workers defending their health damaging jobs, whilst being deeply critical; and a middle-class moralist green movement did not yet exist. - The workers-activists developed their independent forms of organisation within the actual struggles of the time, reassessing the relationships between the mobilisations of the workers and their own role as active workers, between factory and wider social terrain, between workers' struggles and the new forms of union representations and 'professional' political groups like Potere Operaio, between mass movement, armed insurrectionist groups and state repression. Below we publish the introduction and content list of the booklet. If you want to get hold of the DVD or the English version of the booklet, please get in touch with: redaktion@wildcat-www.de

Source: www.prol-position.net/nl/2007/08/marghera