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It all started with a siege: what happened in Italy on October 18th and 19th

Written by Oana Parvan, 29.10.2013
Hopes and dreams in the Susa Valley
Some two months ago the national housing activists met the NO TAV* movement in the sunny green Susa Valley. The plan was a week of national mobilization culminating with a general strike (of the rank-and-file unions) followed by a mass demonstration against austerity and precarity in Rome. Putting together the whole Italian movement sounded like wishful thinking. No one could imagine what was going to happen.
 
Weeks of hard work and national coordination followed. Bit by bit the 19th October general uprising was taking shape. The week before was marked by numerous appropriation events: from empty buildings being squatted by students to families sieging shopping centers for food at fair prices.
 

Suicide as protest in Romania and Tunisia

Written by Oana Parvan, 09.02.2011

On 24th December 2010, in the Romanian parliament, a bleeding man was shouting “Freedom!” while being carried outside by the paramedics. He had just tried to kill himself, jumped from the journalists’ balcony, little before the prime minister began his speech.
This surreal image is the pitiless representation of  Romanian society: an autistic political class and an aphasic public opinion.

I've seen happy Romanians

Written by Oana Parvan, 28.12.2010

Imagine you're living in a country not very different from Italy. You can breath the corruption in the air, the great public works cost three times more than anywhere else and are never finished and the winners of the public auctions are decided by a phone call. The press - when not "porniphicated" - is declared by the authorities "a menace for the national security" and the opposition - when it's not the government's accomplice - is only patient and waiting for the electoral wheel to turn in its favor.

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