#I imagive there will be more arrests as protests and encampment are still ongoing

[trans-xianxian]

the bail fund for student protesters arrested at portland state university yesterday is defensefundpdx on both p@yp@al and venm0

[wumingfoundation]

Wu Ming 1′s Book on the #NoTav Movement

No Promise This Trip Will Be Short. 25 Years of No Tav Struggle (Einaudi, Turin 2016)

  When they first read accounts of the No DAPL struggle in North Dakota, many Italian activists - and even some mainstream media pundits - made comments on the lines of: «It's like the Free Republic of La Maddalena!», or: «Lakotas and No TAV employ exactly the same tactics!», or: «Standing Rock should twin with Venaus!». What were these people talking about?

Such sentences were not mysterious to anyone who knew what had been happening for years in Val di Susa, an Alpine valley of North-Western Italy.

Encampments that became self-managed communes? Lockdowns and acts of sabotage? Prayers as a method of protest? A struggle thriving on generational interconnectedness? Resistance flags everywhere? Priests and anarchists together?

Seriously, how can you read about Standing Rock and not think of the No TAV movement?

There are obvious, important differences though.

The No DAPL struggle takes place in the US and is covered by the media in a global language, English. Moreover, reports and accounts instantly evoke images of Indian resistance that are familiar to almost anyone in the world. For these reasons, the movement gained global fame and raised international solidarity in just a matter of a few months.

Conversely, the NO TAV struggle takes place in a little-known part of Europe, ie the Alpine region connecting Italy and France - Piedmont and Maurienne, to be precise. The images the Alps evoke abroad are usually stereotype-laden and have much more to do with idyllic landscapes and winter sports than with resistance, even if the Alps have always been the theatre of resistance and social conflict. Finally, the coverage of the No TAV struggle is usually in Italian, much less often in French, which means the movement’s importance is rarely acknowledged outside of Italy, and is yet to be discovered in the English speaking world.

And the international public is really missing something. That struggle is ongoing since 1991. By now, more than a quarter century of indomitable mass resistance and amazing civil disobedience!

On a continental scale - with the sole exception of the ZAD movement opposing the construction of an airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France - No Tav are the most long-lasting, enduring movement opposing a mega-project, a public infrastructure which they consider not only useless and unbelievably expensive, but also dangerous for the environment and their lives.

And there are many lessons to be taken by them.

In Val di Susa, opposition against a high-speed railway project - TAV being the acronym for Treno ad Alta Velocità, High Speed Train - connecting Turin and Lyon started in the early 1990s, grew more and more big and became a sensation in December 2005, when hundreds of policemen assaulted and vacated the encampment known as the Free Republic of Venaus. Two days later, thousands of people confronted the cops, scared them off and triumphantly reconquered the camp. Another "free republic" was founded in the Summer of 2011, and became known as the Free Repubblic of La Maddalena.

The movement is still effectively slowing down the project, which was modified many times by the government. However, there's much more than that: the movement has the cultural hegemony in the valley, influences the whole political life of the region and keeps making successful experiments in participation, self-management and even collective property. Police violence, judiciary repression, arrests, defamation, demonization... Nothing could defeat them, they're still there.

How could all that happen?

How come, of all places, it happened in Val di Susa?

Wu Ming 1 seeked answers to those questions for more than three years. He plunged himself into the No Tav movement, took part in several key moments of the struggle, interviewed dozens of activists, merged oral history with archival work, walked in the woods and climbed the mountains of the Val di Susa.

No Promise This Trip Will Be Short is the result of all that work. The author made use of all kinds of literary techniques in order to «tell this story by any means necessary».  As happens with Wu Ming's output of the 2010s, already comprising such «unidentified narrative objects» as Il sentiero degli dei and Point Lenana, the book is an unpredictable, and yet consistent, blend of non-fiction novel, travelogue, journalistic inquiry, lovecraftian horror story, and magico-realistic epic tale paying tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Manuel Scorza.

No Promise This Trip Will Be Short was published in Italy in the Autumn of 2016 and immediately stirred up controversies. Pro-TAV politicians attacked the author, an anti-TAV member of Parliament showed his colleagues a copy during a session, and the most famous anti-NoTAV magistrate felt the urge to send a daily newspaper a negative (albeit not entirely negative) review of the book. No Promise This Trip Will Be Short was widely reviewed and was reprinted only a few weeks after the first edition.

Bologna, January 2017

Wu Ming 1 is a member of the Wu Ming Foundation, a collective of authors who wrote together several novels (including Q, 54, Manituana and Altai) and “unidentified narrative objects”. Each member of the WMF also writes “solo” books. Wu Ming 1 wrote New Thing (2004), Point Lenana (with Roberto Santachiara, 2013) and Un viaggio che non promettiamo breve. The WMF is based in Bologna, Italy.

Praise for No Promise This Trip Will Be Short

One would instinctively describe the new book by Wu Ming 1 with these words: a divisive book. Because the subject itself is divisive, because the title contains the word «struggle», because the author sides with the movement explicitly. However, the paradoxical truth is that «divisive» is not the correct word this time. No Promise This Trip Will Be Short is indeed a connecting book, a book that unites, links people and things, brings them all together and gives any reader, no matter their prior opinion, the opportunity to experience life on the other side of the barricade. And should someone decide to keep their opinion, that's in their right, even after reading such a well-argued and documented work, it's in their right, but it would be interesting to know on what grounds. Daniele Giglioli, Corriere della Sera

No Promise This Trip Will Be Short is an immense trunk of information and eye-witness accounts, a partisan and yet unassailable in-depth analysis of the poisonous, mantra-like narrative surrounding big public works, especially the now 30-year-old propaganda supporting high speed railways. The book blends novel and essay, journalism and epic literature... Davide Turrini, Il Fatto Quotidiano

With uncommon amplitude and rigorous passion, Wu Ming 1 wrote a book that will last, a book that many people should read to understand what really happened in that valley and what certainly will keep going on, something that is relevant to all of us. Goffredo Fofi, Avvenire

For three years Wu Ming 1 explored the woods mutilated by wire fences, the construction yards protected by the army, and the garrisons of civil resistance that the media describe as dens of terrorists. As both an inhabitant of the valley and a member of the No TAV technical commission, I confirm that all data and sources are reliable, verified and correct. The book casts light on a paradoxical story lived by "ordinary" men and women who, facing the umpteenth attack on planet earth, put their own lives at risk and now are paying the price by suffering disproportionate police and judiciary repression. They haven't yet defeated «The Being», but they have lighted a torch of awareness. Luca Mercalli, Il Fatto Quotidiano