In July 2001, the G8 organised a summit in Genoa, Italy. The G8 (originally the G6) had been meeting since 1976, but something new was in the air. 20 months previously, trade unionists and environmentalists had united in Seattle to disrupt the WTO Ministerial Conference. In September 2001, 12,000 demonstrated outside the IMF / World Bank summit in Prague. In June 2001, 25,000 protested the EU summit in Gothenburg. The growing anti-globalisation movement now mobilised to Genoa.
A series of demonstrations were planned. The first demo – for refugees – on Thursday 18th July attracted an unexpected 50,000 people. The next day, angry demonstrators marched on the fortress that was holding the summit. Riot police – under the orders of deputy prime minister Gianfranco Fini, a former member of Italy’s Fascist party – fired at the demo. They shot 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani dead, then reversed over his body with a police jeep.
What happened next was crucial. Fausto Bertinotti, leader of Rifondazione Comunista, a new left party with 11 seats in the Italian parliament, was interviewed on TV. Instead of the usual platitudes you hear from politicians, he called on everyone watching TV to cancel all their plans for the following day and to demonstrate against the G8 in Carlo’s memory.
The next day was electric. Three hundred thousand people shouted “Assassini” (murderers) at the tooled-up police. We fought through tear gas but did not back down. We were also supported by the local population, who hung banners from their balconies, cheered the passing demonstration, and threw down bottles of water (essential on a sweltering day).
The next day, the police took their revenge, raiding the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum, seriously injuring several activists and forcing them to chant “Long Live Mussolini”. The floors of the Armando Diaz school were running with blood. But the anti-capitalist movement had arrived in Europe. Over the next decade, every G8 summit has been met by mass demonstrations, and Social Forums have met to discuss how we can make the movement’s slogan “Another World is Possible” a reality.
