Bologna and Genoa, but also Milan in the past, Naples, Turin and surrounding areas have experienced violent demonstrations. Destruction and vandalism are commonplace when social centers take to the streets, where today’s Palestine and yesterday’s Alfredo Cospito are good opportunities to cause damage to cities. However, groups that are at the threshold of this law still have freedom of movement. The Red Party governments in the big cities tolerated social centers, if only because of electoral concerns: they were too greedy for votes to leave them alone. The latest example is Bologna: on Friday the city was again attacked by violent groups because in PalaDozza, for the Euroleague, Maccabi Tel Aviv challenged Virtus Bologna. After trying to stir up the race, appeasing the violent people who threatened reprisals, the next day the Mayor of Lepore attempted to attribute the destruction of the city to the work of violent people from outside Bologna but was rejected by the National Police Headquarters: of the 5000 participants, only a hundred were “foreigners”. Among the demonstrators were also representatives of two social centers that occupy space owned by the municipality, Labas and Tpo, whose Fratelli d’Italia group on the city council called for the removal: “Stop all funding and collaboration.” That’s what the Milan City Government is trying to do with Leoncavallo. The social center was evicted from its historic occupation of spaces on Via Watteau, and returned to its rightful owners amid protests, including from left-wing groups across the institutional spectrum. For some time Beppe Sala had been trying to entrust Leoncavallo with the city headquarters, but the social center stated that they did not like it: they said that the headquarters was not in an optimal position. But the Municipality continues to try to make the social center legal, and turns a blind eye to other “self-managed” entities in Milan, also because voting can be done from there.
As in Turin, it is better to turn a blind eye to the violence that occurred in the social center of Askatasuna. The City Government led by Lo Russo is attempting to incorporate a collection of historic violence into a public goods project: work recently began on the building that Askatasuna has occupied illegally for 29 years.
