rivista anarchica
anno 41 n. 367
dicembre 2011 - gennaio 2012


No-Tav

A river descending the valley
Interview to Nicoletta Dosio by Orsetta Bellani
Photo by Silvia Lippi

The underlying causes of the struggle in Susa Valley, in the words of a retired member of the historical movement No-TAV and secretary of the PRC circle of Bussoleno. "We will win for sure, it is of our own lives".

 

“Go to the restaurant La Credenza Bussoleno Nicoletta Dosio and ask." So I replied, without'd have to think too much, a guy No TAV Turin when I asked those interviewed to understand the real reasons of the Movement. Dosio Nicoletta is a retired teacher who has behind him and before him a life of struggle. Active in the revolution of '68, Nicoletta has not lost, as many of his companions at the time, the capacity for indignation. Today is one of the most famous voices in a movement that embraces a valley of 60 thousand people.

How and when was born the No Tav movement?

We started in five, the first action was in '91 in Bussoleno station, when it passed the first TGV. It was a struggle against the privatization of rail services, which involved the closure of small stations and cutting commuter trains. The train service was no longer regarded as a right, but should generate a profit: they decided that if the regions could not take charge, of 16 thousand km of the Italian railway network it would cut 11 thousand, because it did not create profit. At the same time, they established the enhancement of 5 thousand km of railway network compatible with high speed. But people have to go to work from Bussoleno to Turin, from Turin to Lyon is not every day.

How did you grow so much?

To involve the population was crucial at the beginning. Of great help were some teachers of the Polytechnic of Turin, which allowed us to produce evidence in support of our motivations. So we were able to come up with reasons documented in popular assemblies, because we have not chosen the institutions, but the popular struggle. When we started doing the demonstrations against the TAV we were a hundred, but when, in '96-'97, they have tried to make the first surveys to start up the drills, we had already put up some opposition. And soon sprang up No TAVCommittees throughout the valley. Each episode of repression we suffered then led to a growing movement, because there is a sense of injustice."

no tav

Why do you not want the TAV?

From the environmental point of view, because the tunnel would cut all surface water, causing the death of the area. Moreover, the place where they should dig contains uranium and asbestos, which will spread with the wind in the air. A Swedish company in the early '90s had even started a small uranium mine, then they left to close.

Yet the supporters of Tab believe that the work also has an environmental purpose.

One of the things they said is that this type of transport would remove trucks from the roads, but it is not true, and especially does not take away the cars, because if there isn't a regional train, commuters are forced to take the car. The ecologist will also be denied by another fact, namely, that in parallel with the railways were born or have been improved highways. It is the traffic corridor: a place where everything flows, nothing stands still, depleting and polluting the areas it passes through. The aim is to discourage local production and increase the traffic of import and export goods, but what sense does it make to get the potatoes in Germany or fungi in Spain? Market policy has as main objective the movement of goods and profit in the construction of great works.

This leads us to consider other reasons for the movement.

The TAV does not make sense even from the point of view, different from ours, to facilitate the movement of goods: the existing railway is underused, it is not completely saturated, one should first resume using it. The TAV is a public work that does not serve the people. To do this, whose debts will go on for generations and generations, are cutting essential services: transport, health, education.

Despite this, however, the arc in favor of the constitutional TAV PD goes from the PDL. The PD of Turin has even threatened to expel the Mayors of the Val di Susa against the work. Because everyone wants the TGV?

Why is to those who do it, it is a huge business: there are 20 billion that the Cross Party Affairs plans to cash out. "

the Cross Party Affairs?

The Obbiettivo Act provides that aim to make these works there is a general contractor, or a private entity chosen by the government to distribute the contracts negotiated in order to streamline procedures and reward his friends. In our case the general contractor is Fiat. The contract for the construction of the tunnel 52 kilometers - which has not been realized, because neither one stroke of the hoe yet been given - had been granted to the family of the then Minister of Infrastructure Lunardi. This is the Cross Party Affairs, because it is a combination of crazy people with no possibility of defense. It is a party that has its representatives in places of power and institutions, which allow its financing and thus its reproduction. It is the public employment by large private interests, those which are the structures that guarantee public order should be subservient to this party. Lawmakers in it for funding under the table because the party is through the great works in this valley breathe a mixture of ill repute and politics. The mafia sits in Parliament, and are not the little mobsters who occasionally stop to show that they are against the Mafia.

What does the No Tav movement through the Val di Susa?

This mountain was important from the point of view of the fight against fascism in the '40s, so there is a link between the historical memory of the old and the new resistance, which has meant that even the elderly were involved. It's a fight cross: there are boys and there are eighty years old. And there are different histories, different political backgrounds too, but they are merged into this fight, which is based on a vision of solidarity

Why the No TAV struggle has shifted from the local to the national one?

The No Tav movement has become over time the symbol of a world that is not prepared to globalize themselves, to make things more clear and beautiful lives. Today we speak of common goods and this is a fight for the common good, not only public services, but the idea of a world with different human relationships. Our struggle brings together several aspects: it is not only an environmental or local, is the struggle for life and a model of development different. Resources are limited, the planet is not infinite, what we leave to our children? A world apart ".

Will you win?

Surely, because there is no alternative: if we win we all die, not only psychologically but also physically, for all the poisons that throwing in the air. Ours is a struggle for the right to exist and we are confident that we will win: they are weaker than us, not only because numerically inferior, but because their reasons are shabby. Our struggle has become emblematic and gave strength to many other struggles, if we lose we lose all. We can not give in for the other Italian movements, a sign that we are fighting and you can pay it to win courage, makes you feel free. They afraid of the people who decide not to accept, because they know that if we begin to defend ourselves no longer have control. The famous internalization of defeat is the one that prevented the people to defend themselves, but now we have decided that is not true that you can not do anything. The Val di Susa has chosen not to give up: we are going down a river valley, we can not stop.

Orsetta Bellani