10 years after Carlo Guliani was shot by the Italian police, we will open the Carlo Guliani park in Berlin Kreuzberg. This park shall be a free space belonging to everybody, a place of meeting each other and of respect - a park without the terror of consume and efficiency, without paranoid security and surveillance measures. In Berlin, there are only few places left in which we are not forced to spend money, be a customer or have the feeling of moving on a catwalk. Why? Who has stolen these places? Who has stolen culture, the feeling for music, art and community? Who has stolen our city? Those being responsible for privatisation and commercialisation, the profit strategists of the free market, the engineers of the grey everyday life are the ones.
The name of Carlo Guliano shall let us remember and to the same time let us look forward and give us the courage and the power to continuously fight for a world in which oppression, the destruction of our environment, war and the race at the stock markets of the metropolis are now and for all times history.
10 years ago we met with hundred thousands of people of the whole world in Genoa to confront the self-elected representatives of the global north, the so called G8, with our NO!. Our NO! to their plastic world turning everything into a product and in which the normal people can only participate in form of being producers of the wealth of the some, the few. Our NO! to a world in which only a minority has the right to nourishment, education and to the freedom of bodily and mental integrity. Our NO! to the lethal logic of capitalism.
Because our NO! unifies and strengthens us! Our NO! crosses borders, smuggles itself past customs officers, overcomes the differences of language and culture and unifies the honest and noble part of mankind, which also is, and that should not be forgotten, its majority. Our NO! needs no permission, no party and no hope in higher authorities.
Because our NO! is a YES! For life, for collectiveness, as we believe in solidarity and beauty - our NO! means to have the courage for utopia.
those of us having met in Genoa were unified through the hope and the will to fight for another world. We were inspired through the Zapatist movement which declared "another world is possible" in 1994. We were part of the protests in Seattle and Prague, during the world social forums and in the corresponding local struggles. The answer of the ruling class in Genoa was clear: They had to beat those they could not win, the loud voices demanding another world had to be silenced. Carlo was shot. Thousands were injured, arrested and tortured. In Bolzaneto, the Diaz School, in the police stations, the Marrassi jail. We have not forgotten and we still are here!
The issues being bad to that time have worsened. In breathtaking speed they export wars, climate catastrophes and stock market crashes. Our hope that this system will destroy itself has up to now not fulfilled itself. A minority of greedy criminals has declared war on the rest of mankind. In the moment, we experience a nuclear catastrophe for which the powerful of the world are responsible. In their mania for profit they leave behind a trail of destruction, making parts of our planet uninhabitable.
If our NO! was right 10 years ago, it even more is today!
Everywhere, new resistance is forming. Worldwide, people go onto the streets and are not satisfied with being spectators at the margins of history any more. The hunger for social change and dignity exist. We are there!
We are told that globalisation is to be an inevitable process having the effect of gravity. So our answer is: Then we will have to suspend the laws of gravity.
Subcomandante Marcos / Chiapas
Long live the rebellion saying NO!
NO! to death!
Genova Libera - Berlin Kreuzberg 2011