Perhaps I am one of a few who just heard on August 6 about the police attacks in Genoa, Italy, on July 21. But I suspect I am, instead, one of millions of Americans who had not. There was a brief letter in the Denver Post that morning calling attention to it. Then, while driving to work that morning, KGNU (Boulder, CO, community radio) had a repeat of an Alternative Radio piece which was an interview with a journalist who had been in Genoa up until the day before the police attack.
Since I scan newspapers every day, it seems hard to believe that very little made the mainstream media until now, but it wasn't until August 8 that the Denver Post picked up a New York Times article entitled "Criticism intensifies over police brutality in Genoa : Dozens injured, some still jailed." And in the Arizona Republic, an Associated Press article entitled "Undue force used at summit, Italy police say."
In Genoa, during the G-8 summit, the Independent Media had a building from which independent journalists worked, and across the street was a school which was used as sleeping space for journalists reporting on and activists demonstrating during the summit. In the middle of the night, Italian police entered the school and proceeded to beat people who were sleeping, severely injuring many, who were taken to hospitals where "emergency room doctors said a number of the injured would have died without treatment." (From the New York Times article.) Nearly all of the people in the building were arrested.
Starhawk, who has been an activist most of her life along with being an author, has three postings on her experience during the Genoa demonstrations. I've included the urls where these may be found, sourced on the Vancouver, British Columbia, Independent Media website.
This one is her observations from the Independent Media building of the police action in the building across the street, and her thoughts concerning the future of free speech: "For if this level of repression goes unchallenged, no one is safe, not the most legal NGO, not the most reformist organization with the mildest demands. If we don't act now, when a political space remains open to us, we may lose the space to act at all."
Starhawk: Fascism in Genoa
These two are her first and second postings:
Starhawk in Genoa, Day One
Starhawk in Genoa, After Day Two
Finally, I include this url which has many other postings about Genoa.
GENOA LEGAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES from the Independent Media Center.
Should these urls become unposted, go to the IndyMedia for information.
What is even more sickening is that I have yet to hear of anyone in the upper echelons of the United States government make any protest or comment about this. I am deeply ashamed that our government is always putting corporate wishes ahead of democratic principles. The United States has indeed become one of a world of corporate governments: government by the corporations, for the corporations, but very little government of the corporations.
If Italian police feel safe in beating people who are asleep, for God's sake, and then taking them to police stations and torturing them until they say "Viva Il Duce", then where will justice be safe and served?
At least, Europeans are demonstrating against the Italian government. And where is the United States? Down on the ranch, playing cowboy, thinking about stem-cell research, and figuring out how much he can offend the far right conservatives without losing their support.
This is a short and not so sweet column this month. Haven't been any place pretty enough to write about. And feeling extremely disgusted with all the warheads being bandied about….in the Middle East, in space, wherever somebody wants what somebody else has got.
(And if you don't have access to a true community, alternative news radio, visit KGNU for radio on the web out of Boulder, Colorado.)
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