An Account to Settle

[Text of a poster put up in Italy in May of 2006]

In Torino, in May of 2005, four immigrants died at the hands of the forces of order within the space of a few days. Ibra from Senegal was killed by a shot to the head from a pistol in the course of a "normal control" [an arbitrary identity check by police]; Mamadou, also Senegalese, drowned in the Po river in the course of a sweep; Eddy, a Nigerian, fell from the ledge of a building during a raid; while in the prison of Vallette, a young Slavic person committed suicide.

Four homicides for the preparation of the "Olympic Games of Peace" in Torino, an escalation of police terror in the neighbourhoods of the "undesirables", while the blood of the imprisoned in revolt flowed inside the detention centre of Corso Brunelleschi, between deportations and hunger strikes.

Today, a year later, while the witnesses and friends of the immigrants who were killed stay quiet or get deported, with the cops who are responsible for these deaths forgotten, come the criminal charges against tens of companions who dared to break the silence and act in solidarity with the immigrants in struggle. The State wants to present the bill.

In the meantime, the past year has seen the growth, day after day, of yet another account: how many young people were killed, as vagabonds, on the paths of social inequality? One dies for some Euros, a watch, a stolen car, a "halt!" ignored or a "simple control". This world is in the process of exploding. The proletarian class squeezes into rows; the law is made to the taste of the day, authorizing it to arm itself and to shoot to defend property.

In Paris, in November [2005], the umpteenth death created an explosion that blew the lid off the exasperation that incubated during decades of humiliations and exploitation. From the suburbs of the heart of Europe, the riffraff return to raise their heads, set fires, cause devastation and fight the police. This is the state of emergency, the curfew, the rehearsals for the civil war. This is the return of the social question.

The flames of Paris, illuminating the dawn of the millennium, remind the dominant class of what they already know in their hearts: they will receive, one day or another, from an anonymous and terrible hand, the bill to pay for all these faceless deaths.

Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories