We are workers, tired of self-defeating the turn of events, we are undergoing in the work places and trade-unions (confederations or alternatives ones), therefore we have decided to start a website, aiming for the formation of a committee to help coordinate the workers in struggle.
There are four sections: historical archive, feedback, art and ongoing struggles.
“Historical archive” is our class memory, it is a collection of material we want to submit to a critical analysis. The “feedback” section is meant to broaden contacts and discussion, we hope, occasions of political synthesis. The “ongoing struggles” is to promote information and solidarity among the workers: for this, above all, the need is felt. We have decided, as a work in progress, to open a section on “art”: songs, poems and films on labour movement. The class struggle is, mostly, a matter of emotion and we are interested in art that shows and feeds this passion.
We found ourselves having to fight in difficult situations (layoffs, increased workloads, etc.) and we did want to use existing trade unions or self-organization, but what we have always tried, it is to show the unity of the workers.
It may seem obvious, but the obstacles we faced were enormous, years and years of arbitration have made a clean sweep of the most basic principles including, for example, the “mutual support” between the exploited.
When we were in hardship, we tried to give birth to coordinating committees of struggle, but we encountered the limitations in the various local experiences. Limitations can be overcome only by going beyond the suffocating cages of categories or crafts.
We distance ourselves from all “nihilistic” attitudes typical of this times of resignation. To be clear: we are not concerned in being chained to the companies' gates, climbing roofs , pleading to trade unionists or with the politicians in charge.
Continuing to struggle, in individualistic terms, everyone in its own workplace, we will not go anywhere. We have to start putting our strength in the field, the only language our opponents will understand. Since we live in a global society we must place the local experience in an international perspective. So, we will try to give adequate attention to the struggles developed in other countries.
Finally, we chose to call the site Chicago86 in memory of the massacres of strikers that took place in Chicago in 1886, to emphasize the importance of the international struggle for the reduction of the working day. This is the meaning of May Day, and for this reason every year we go down to the streets to remember our comrades fallen in the battle.
Solidarity is necessary for a class that means to promote and foster, and that has nothing to do with the philanthropic attitudes towards the “poor worker” left jobless. To the reduction of the working day we add, alongside, another absolutely complementary claim, that of wages for the unemployed - these two claims can not be separated.
It is hard to predict the progress of the class struggle in Italy and elsewhere, but only by remaining faithful to these rallying cries we can make a valuable contribution to the formation of an enviroment of genuine class struggle.
- Chicago86 -
