A-Infos (en) Italy: Anarchist communist worker wins case brought against him by train company

Dear comrades,
It is with some satisfaction (and my usual tardiness!) that I can announce that
the sentence of the Rome court, handed down on 18th November 2005, regarding
the "10 Days Trial" was in my favour. This means that Trenitalia [the Italian
national rail company] lost its case to legally enforce the 10-day suspesion I
received by way of disciplinary measure for having written, in my capacity as
elected and mandated union representative, a letter to the daily newspaper "Il
Secolo XIX" to protest about the bad service on the railways.
At present I do not know the exact terms of the sentence, and it will take
about 20 more days to find out the reason for the court's decision. So my delay
in communicating the result was also due to this, and not only to laziness!

I would love to be able to celebrate a victory thanks to the justice of my case
(and not just thanks to some legal loophole), because a victory like this could
be most useful in the battles that surely lie ahead of us, battles for the
defence of our freedom of expression and against repression in the workplace.

The news of the victory in this trial is however good, coming as it does in a
difficult period for Italian rail workers. A court victory is by now a rarity.
One of the dismissals as a result of the "Report" affair has been confirmed by
the court in Genoa, and the outcome of the others is far from certain. Other
trials and arbitrations regarding ordinary rail workers and union activists in
recent months have all had disastrous outcomes, confirming the fact that you
can't normally beat the bosses using their own tools. The repressive machinery
is working flat out in support of the policies of liberalization of the
railways. This sentence, in fact, seems to go in the opposite direction and I
hope that its importance can have more far-reaching effects than just my own
case.

I am convinced that a relevant role was played in this trial by the large-scale
mobilization that was put into action, by the extraordinary solidarity I
received from all over the world through the channels of the Federazione dei
Comunisti Anarchici (FdCA). The Committee for Solidarity with Fabrizio
Acanfora, set up immediately after the disciplinary measure was taken against
me by comrades with whom I shared years of bitter struggles in the railways,
was given the opportunity to make use of the website
(http://www.fdca.it/fabriziounodinoi) and international relations of the FdCA.
The many messages of solidarity which arrived from every continent showed that
people are still well capable of showing their indignation and opposing
neo-liberalist arrogance. Thanks to this, I never felt alone in this battle. In
those hard moments, I could see the strength of the support of comrades, both
those well-known to me and those I had never heard of. Our strength, the
strength of our politics and our ideas. The strength of anarchist communists
throughout the world.

The list of people I should thank is a long one. Apart from those who are
particularly close to me, those colleagues who have supported me right from the
start of this adventure (colleagues from all over Italy who came to the first
hearing of the trial) and of course the FdCA, I should also mention my fine
defence lawyer, Vincenzo Giovinazzo, from Alessandria, who beat one of the most
"feared" legal firms in the capital; the comrade of the [ferrovierinlotta]
discussion list and my French comrades from Alternative Libertaire and SUD Rail
who were the first to send me a much-appreciated message of solidarity; the
SULT, FLTU-CUB and ORSA trade unions who openly supported me (even though I was
at the time an elected union representative for the FILT-CGIL union) and who
called a strike and organizaed other initiatives; the many workers, precarious
workers and unemployed workers from all over Italy, Europe and even from South
America, the USA and South Africa, who felt it in themselves to express their
support for me against freedom-killing measures.

The road is still an uphill road. But we can hold our heads up and go forward.

Anarchist communist greetings,

Fabrizio Acanfora



For background information, please visit:
http://www.fdca.it/fabriziounodinoi/en/index.htm

fabriziounodinoi@fdca.it
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