VALSUSA – From the 29. To the 31. Of July after 40 years of struggle, again the No Tav Festival in Valsusa, Italy took place. Thousands and thousands of young people from all over Italy and parts of France came together to protest the building of the Tav Train line. Since the 80s public-run enterprise FS wants to build this track with the aim to connect different European metropolises with high-speed trains but this would mean the destruction of the environment in the Italian country-side and it would affect negatively the people living in it, which would see their way of life disrupted for the benefit of capitalist interests.
For this reason every year those protests escalate into confrontations with the police as the youth of the movement attempt to break the heavily guarded fences that protect the construction site. In response police shoots masses of teargas towards the young protestors, who come from all kinds of political left-wing groups and organisations. From anarchists to socialists and communists, feminist and ecological movements. Despite the brutal tactics of the militarized Italian police, which injured at least one protester, the protesters didn’t back down and the action was successful.
This year also young internationalists took part in the protest, especially pointing out that the solution to ecological crisis – and the destruction and enslavement of nature that is part of it – lies within the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan and his paradigm of Democratic Confederalism.
