> I take it that collaboration has continued and expanded:
so what? Isn't this the sign of the ability of the movement of making the traditional left shifting positions and changing behaviors?
> ***** 'Traditional' politics have also resurfaced over the question
> of standing in elections. Although Italy is still undergoing a
> fascinating and inspiring period of mass mobilisations, it is not a
> fundamentally different society to a year ago. So electoral politics
> and trade union mobilisations still dominate the thinking of the
> majority of left wing voters and activists. So elements of the
> movement have been unable to resist the temptation of standing in
> council elections at the end of May. In Genoa Giuliano Giuliani,
> Carlo's father, stood for the centre-left DS party.
of course. Giuliano Giuliani, has been a lifelong member of the DS ( he's been a leader of a Union close to the DS). What's the news ? This crap that you keep posting is nothing but smoke screen. (Carlo Giuliani was the young student killed in Genoa in 2001)
> The same is true outside of Genoa. Communist Refoundation has offered
> many social forum activists a place in its list of candidates. There
> is a social forum candidate in Cosenza in the south. And in the far
> north, Vicenza, the leader of the 'disobedient' wing of the movement,
> Luca Casarini, also ran as a councillor.
the latter is not true at all. There is an ongoing debate for the participation of sections of the movement in next year's election for the European Parliament. It hasn't been decided in what form yet. Moreover, it's been a while (years) that members of the Centri Sociali (especially in Veneto, Negri's - and Casarini- region) have been elected in local administrations (specifically Beppe Caccia in Venice), and very effectively so. The same could be said of Cosenza, where Franco Piperno (my old friend and leader of Potere Operaio and Autonomia, and a victim of the state's repression for four decades) has been the city's Department of Culture and Education commissioner for many years. I find the debate over the relationship between the movement and elected institutions (local, national, and international) very educational, a sign of the fluidity of the situation, and of self-evident growth. Again, this has nothing to do with a "statist" temptation.
Beppe Caccia and Luca Casarini were both in Padua, in the past few days. Casarini is so far from becoming tempted by the state that he's been ordered out of Padua for three years by the police, a couple of weeks ago (an old law of the fascist era has been enforced ad hoc) . Naturally, he's "disobeying" the order. But he's not doing it alone :
http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2003/11/419004.php
BTW, here is the journal of a "typical" Casarini's day, partially in English, (the day before yesterday) :
http://www.globalradio.it/article.php3?id_article=1170
ciao, alessandro