Euromayday – a multi-scalar network



Working paper: The mayday project in Milan

Marion Hamm

[pic]

Contents

Euromayday – urban movements and their media 1

Milan – sociability, re/production and alternative media 1

0. Intro 1

I. Mayday in urban time-space: “Mayday was the city and the city was Mayday” 3

II. Labour / Media / Sociability 8

III. Milan: structure and political traditions 10

IV. Narrativity 15

V. Media practices and centri sociali 17

Conclusion 23

Appendix 23

1

2 Euromayday – urban movements and their media

Milan – sociability, re/production and alternative media

1 0. Intro

When the first Euromayday Parade was held simultaneously in 16 European cities in 2005, the format of “a demo that looks like a street parade”[1] had already taken shape in Milan over the previous four years. Activists had developed an analysis of precarity as a double-faced condition, simultaneously an imposition and a promise. Mediated techniques helped to reflect on everyday experiences and to challenge precarious conditions of life and work in numerous ways. Euromayday gave rise to the production and representation of political subjectivities. The mayday parades were part of a process of experimentation with the aim to turn political subjectivities into political struggles.

Initiated by the media collective Chainworkers Crew, the social center Deposito-Bulk and the radical trade union CUB, the first city-wide event took place in 2001 with 5000 participants. It spread to the wider region the next year. Supported by activist groups from other Italian cities, the event extended onto the national level in 2003, when the numbers of participants increased tenfold and many guests from abroad could be welcomed. In 2004, Mayday became Euromayday as a second parade was simultaneously held in Barcelona. In 2005, the Milan parade reached a record participation of 120000 (Zahlen – Mattoni). Since then, the numbers remained constantly at around 100000.

Description of a typical Milan Mayday Parade (Vehicles, Music, Dancing, Media)

Already the Mayday Parade 2002 was extensively documented online. On the chainworkers website, we find a video and a photo gallery comprising 146 photos. This series of photos allows the spectator to accompany the 2002 Mayday Parade as it flows through the city of Milan. The first pictures show the start at Porta Ticinese, a distinctive landmark which gave the name to the neighbourhood. The last pictures are taken in the area of the cathedral.

Several pictures show trucks decorated with giant puppets, very large posters and logos, for instance the dropped Euro/pound/dollar logo of the chainworkers collective. One vehicle is dressed up as a pirate vehicle, denoting the peer-to-peer filesharing / free software movement. Attached to it is a red banner demanding „nessun profitto sui saperi“, complemented by a call to "boycot microsoft - support free software". It is populated by men – nerds? - wearing nothing but boxer shorts. We see some relaxed scenes on trucks - people chatting, playing music, socialising. Some vehicles are small, like the weird little thing which looks like a motobike dressed up as a car with eyes, or the vehicle carrying several barrels. Someone carries a soundsystem on a bike. One group brought a real agricultural traktor, followed by toy tractors. One vehicle is labelled „Mayday“ and bears the slogan "i say: give me my money!" - a reference to the slogan of the previous year: „I say: Mayday! Mayday“. (Brainworkers truck).

The formation is loose, more like a casual walk, at times transforming into a street party than a rally. People laugh and sing while they walk. The streets are completely full, no space is left between house-wall and house-wall. The parade flows through the streets. Some people are on bicycles, some brought their small kids. A group of middle aged men with flags discusses something on the street. A brass band adds life music to the techno, pop, reggae music from the sound systems. A large crossroads is blocked with a band, a large drum and a guy playing the violine. Only few pictures show rows of police in uniform, wearing helmets – a noticeable detail considering that the brutal police actions at the G8 protests in Genoa are only one year past. Some photos inadvertedly show people taking pictures with small cameras.

The kurdish left carries a banner denouncing the post 9/11 terrorism claim directed at any muslim community: "kurdi non sono terroristi".  Migrants carry a street-wide banner: "Siamo migranti non criminali". Some pictures show street theatre scenes. A giant mobile phone mounted on a shopping trolley is pulled by people who are chained to it. It announces "fuori sevizio - out of service". Large scissors are carried along. Bodies become notice boards for more or less explicit commentary. A man with a camera wears rabbit ears stuck to his head. A black man with a mohawk hairdo wears a t-shirt bearing the US flag and the signature "Terrorist no 1" - a reference to 9/11. A woman carries a simple cardboard saying nothing but: „Freelance“. One group has dressed up in orange overalls.

The demo leaves traces on the walls it passes, on billboards, adverts and cashpoints. A 4 sheets bearing slogans like "net not work" or "life is short dont work", some signed by imc bologna, adorn the walls. Cashpoints are completely covered in stickers. One cashpoint is turned into an advertisement against itself: A large banner exclaiming „reclaim money!“ is affixed across the top length of the cashpoint niche.

2 I. Mayday in urban time-space: “Mayday was the city and the city was Mayday”

In Milan more than in other cities, the Mayday of the precarious inscribed itself into urban time-space. In the fourth year, the laid-back music cortege which started in the alternative neighbourhood of Porta Ticinese in the afternoon had superseded the traditional mayday march in the center in the morning. In fact, the timing and choice of location for the parade was one of the means by which the city's time-space became a medium to claim the city as a canvas to represent precarious experiences. While the choice of the first of May marked a closeness to the traditional labour movement, location and timing conveyed a difference to the official trade union march as well as most other demonstrations in Milan. One of the chainworkers collective recalls how the proposal to begin the Mayday Parade in Porta Ticinese and to hold it in the afternoon was met with irritation during initial negotiations with a secretary of the radical trade union CUB.

„So we said: you put the money, we organise it. We told them: 'It's gonna be a music parade, we wanna do trucks, we wanna do it in the afternoon!' I mean, all this was - in the afternoon… (Quotes trade union secretary:) 'oh, but it's in the morning!' And we said: 'We’re gonna leave from Porta Ticcinese!' (Quotes trade union secretary:) 'no, nobody has ever done a demonstration from there!' (Quotes himself:) 'That's why we want to do it!'“

Because usually, demonstrations leave from a place called Porta Venezia and they go to Duomo. Ours was very different, it would leave from, like, a traditional alternative neighbourhood in Milan, Porta Ticcinese, where it's always started, and it would end at the castle. So, completely, nobody really, there were, it was, I mean, it's stupid, but just to say it was also that which was different.

Although the significance of the choice of place is evident to the interviewee, he finds it difficult to convey this to the researchers who are unfamiliar with the city of Milan. When prompted for the history of Porta Ticcinese, he continues:

Ok, Porta Ticinese. Porta Ticinese basically was the neighbourhood where all the canals – Milano before was like Amsterdam, before Fascism. It was, all the canals would get there. It was the port. As such it has always attracted – Porta Cicca[2], it is called in dialect. It always attracted, you know, thrifters, low-lives, scum, stuff like that, anarchists. So, Ticcinese. Now it's being gentrified. Since the 80s or so, it's been gentrified. But still, I mean, there is the Squats, I mean, the punks with their shop, you know, the first punk shops were there (...), young people go there. (Interview 13a).

Starting a protest event at Porta Ticinese highlighted a particular relationship to the city. Most demonstrations are setting out from the Eastern city gate Porta Venezia, proceed towards the power center of Milan along the representative Corso di Venezia, and finally arrive at the Duomo, the Cathedral. The Mayday Parade starts out at the Southern gate Porta Ticinese, proceeds through a previously abandoned, now gentrified neighbourhood with a radical tradition and ends at the castle, a reminder of numerous insurrections against foreign domination and feudal rulers which was eventually transformed into a prestigious art center and handed over to the Milanese people. Thus the claim to the city symbolically started from a historical home-turf of “thrifters”, “low-lives”, sex-workers, migrants and not least social movements. Presently, this neighbourhood is also inhabited by young creative and cultural workers, a population tuned in with contemporary subcultures and particularly affected by precarity. By linking the parade to this neighbourhood, the participants presented themselves as legitimate inhabitants of the city rather than mere guests in the prestigious and representative center.

However, the Mayday activists found numerous other ways to inscribe their event into the urban fabric. In 2005, the Chainworkers collective and the media group Radiohacktive published a report about the hitherto largest Euromayday Parade and it's at the same time local and transnational character. This report is one of the rare documents which outlines the relationship between Mayday and the city not only in abstract terms, but by naming places, landmarks and timings (Q).

In a language almost inebriated by unexpected success, the text evokes a moment in time when the Euromayday parade was not anymore restricted to a vivid, but limited alternative political scene: “Mayday was the city and the city was Mayday”. At the same time, it situates the locality of Milan on a wider map of social movements across Europe. The remarkable presence of this particular Euromayday parade in the urban fabric of Milan is not only signified through the large and varied participation of more than 120000 people. Numerous references are consciously put into interaction with urban time-space. These references are not spelled out in detail. A local audience would understand them without further explanation. For the researcher, they allow to reconstruct the context of the event and the techniques employed in its construction. Taken as a para-ethnographic source, a contextualisation of this sequence allows a rapprochement to a thick description of Milan as a terrain of the emerging precarity movement.

“In Milano, the mayday has transcended the boundaries of a movement event and has become an urban tradition belonging to the people of the city rather than to the San Precario and Serpica Naro activists that have made it grow in countless actions, pickets, hoaxes. It has seen the participation of an incredible multitude of the many, many people. Notwithstanding despicable intra-movement tensions before and after the parade, it was a great and significant occasion that saw almost 120.000 people filling the streets in the center of the city. Everybody not rich enough to leave the city was there - the Piccolo and Scala theatre workers, activists all kinds and stripes, moms, kids, vegans (delivering free food in giant quantities), gender and post-gender warriors, flexers, temps, "migrants" , neglected precarious laborers, bookshop workers, social angels, dancers, researchers, musicians, from all over Italy.

Starting with the migrant action day of the second of April, to the morning of the first of may, when a "Mayday, Mayday" banner appeared on the top of the of Scala theatre, Mayday was the city and the city was Mayday, through the radiowaves and brainwaves (there were various trasmissions and actions and comunications going on), across Europe.”

(Chainworkers website, Europe’s Funkiest Conspiracy, 2005)

The sequence sets the Euromayday parade explicitly in the urban architecture: Participants “filled the streets in the center of the city”. Numerous online photos and videos of the Milan Euromayday Parades illustrate that this was not just a figure of speech – the stream of the parade literally filled the streets from one side to the other (Q md 2002 photo gallery). Over the years, many of the photographers included images depicting landmarks in their online galleries, for instance Porta Ticinese, the monument which gave the name to the neighbourhood where the Parade starts.

The text sequence inscribes the Mayday parade in the everyday calendar of the city’s inhabitants. In Italy, the first of May is a public holiday, preceded by Liberation Day on April 25th. The sentence “everybody not rich enough to leave the city was there” refers to the widespread practice of Italian employees to take advantage of the proximity of these two public holidays for a break. Nevertheless, many chainstores in the center of Milan are open for business on the first of May. This provoked Mayday activists to hold numerous stage-acted pickets, combined with video interviews of shoppers. As a result, by 2010, most shops in the center of Milan are respecting the public holiday. (lQ: links to videos)

In the text, this popular organisation of time is embedded in a time frame established by the movement itself, not unlike the start of a carnival is marked by the public handing over of the city keys to the king of fools (Scribner). The beginning of the Mayday time is marked by participation in the transnational protest event “migrant action day” on April 2nd, and the first of May is greeted with an late-evening / early-morning banner drop[3]. Thenceforth, the streets belong to the Mayday Parade.

The Mayday banner appeared on a highly symbolic landmark: the top of the Scala theatre, a famous opera house and a “huge source of civic pride” (nyt), which precisely for these qualities had raised the fury of previous generations of activists (Ruggiero 2001:111). In previous months, artists and workers at the Scala Theatre went on strike for an improvement of their precarious working conditions (Q: their website) and caused the resignation of the Scala's renowned music director[4]. In addition to the Scala workers, the workers of another iconic theatre joined the parade: The publicly funded Piccolo Teatro, founded after World War II in an ex-workingmen’s club and site of the debut of Dario Fo’s theatre company (Q). The inclusion of theatre workers, their labour struggles and their highly symbolic workplaces in the text points to an important conceptual element in the Euromayday project: The factory as the place of antagonism between capital and labour is superseded by the metropolis as the new space of production. Thus the city is identified “as the territory to be subverted and reorganised by the new antagonistic forces” (Exposito). These forces are not confined to industrial action. In 2004, activists invented San Precario, the Saint of the precarious, followed in 2005 by Serpica Naro, an equally invented fashion designer who caused controversy at the Milan fashion week. Both figures, each equipped with their own, heavily mediated catching narratives (Mattoni, Vanni), were used to stage numerous interventions in urban public space from supermarkets to the Milan fashion week in the run-up to the Mayday Parade (Q videos). Armed with the proficiency of media workers, the practice of direct action and an intimate knowledge of popular cultural repertoires, activists re-defined the city as a contested site of production. They turned it into a stage where the condition of precarity could be represented (Mattoni Serpica and the others).

Although the report presents a selection of highly localised signifiers, it does not confine the Milan Euromayday Parade to the local level. One of the stated aims of the Mayday Parades was “to bring the spirit of Seattle-Genoa to postindustrial workplaces”. xxx insert piece about transnationalityxxx The selected passage includes three dimensions of transnational networking: A transnational protest event, a shared discourse and digital technologies.

The “migrant action day” mentioned above establishes a connection to the transnational movement networks which created social forums, mass protests against institutions of global governance and other spaces for a critique of neoliberalism. The transnational protest “for freedom of movement and the right to stay” was held simultaneously in 38 cities in 11 countries.[5] Migrant action day was held four times since 2004 (Q noborder). It grew out of the European noborder network which since the late 1990s campaigned in a plurality of local, national and transnational protest formats against the European border regime. The spacially distributed format allowed to physically localise the claim to open borders on the European map. In Milan, Migrant action day and Mayday mutually enriched each other, both adding to the inscription of radical culture in urban time-space.

Moreover, the physical co-presence of participants in 16 cities is enhanced by “the radiowaves and brainwaves (…) across Europe”. Brainwaves points to a shared, trans-European discourse embodied by projects, conferences, friendships, workshops and not least protest events. The term “radiowaves” refers to communication flows facilitated by digital technologies. In 2005, alternative radio stations in several countries collected and transmitted multilingual reports from the Euromayday parades in real time.[6] In Milan and elsewhere, calls, posters and other mobilisation materials were uploaded on websites of local groups and hyperlinked from the Euromayday web-portal. During and after the event, reports about the parades in text, photo and video formats were uploaded on websites as well as commercial and non-commercial online platforms. Additionally, participants in the parade included a considerable number of guests from abroad, who took inspiration with them on their return.

Through the contextualisation of this activist report about the Milan Mayday Parade 2005 it was demonstrated how Mayday activists claimed the city for themselves by skillfully interacting with symbolic meanings and collective memory attached to its architecture. The Mayday Parade can be seen as part of a radical (sub-)culture situated in Milan. As an annual event, it contributes to the ongoing reproduction of an alternative, oppositional space which traverses the city and generates collective symbolic capital (Harvey, bei Pasquinelli) for participants. It was also shown how the imagined space of the parade was extended beyond the city of Milan through transnational communication of ideas, images and concepts. This Europe-wide communicative space was enhanced and partially created by the use of digital technologies.

By marking, mapping and structuring urban time-space by means of an annual protest event, the Milan Mayday activists carved out a platform where precarious experiences were voiced and represented. More than this, the Mayday Parades themselves increasingly became an occasion to mould these experiences in the subjective perception of its participants. To produce political subjectivities related to precarity, Milanese activists drew on a specific combination of concepts and practices relating to the urban structure of the city, it's political traditions and a collective memory of local radical politics.

3 II. Labour / Media / Sociability

Set against the backdrop of the global protest movement, the Milan Mayday Parades of the precarious were characterised by a convergence of media activism, social center infrastructure and radical trade unionism. In this combination, three powerful dimensions were put into interaction: The social question was posed as a challenge to the economic conditions of those who rely on their labour for reproduction, sociability was recognised as a resource for contention and grassroots media channelled through any technology available were employed.

Most of the new social movements since the 1960 did not organise around the position of activists in the production process. They tended to tackle the social question mainly through the lens of other issues like ecology, peace, or claims to autonomy related to identities. Trade unions, on the other hand, raised it almost exclusively in relation to the workplace. Caught up in a fordist analysis of labour, they were unable to reach out to what was until recently called “untypical labour”, that is people working in short-term, temporary, project-oriented jobs, intersected by phases of voluntary or involuntary unemployment. The Mayday project explicitly brought issues of labour, production and reproduction as well as economic conditions on the agenda of new social movements, especially the global protest movement. Through the concept of precarity, it extended the social question to every aspect of everyday life, as precarious labour is neither confined to a position of employment, nor to defined working hours as opposed to leisure time, nor to a workplace such as a desk, workbench, cashier or production line.

Sociability was a crucial feature of the traditional labour movement (Warneken, Kaschuba). Embedded in a distinctive working class culture, a political culture of the labour movement emerged. Workers’ social relations were structured by a industrial, later a fordist regime of time and space, where a collective time rhythm was determined by the machines (Novotny 38). This involved the division of work and leisure, production and reproduction. Networks of sociability both social and political were to a large extent structured by this labour-related regime, and by professional identities. Political organising took place both on the workplace and in leisure time, through trade unions and political parties but also through a wide range of socialist, communist and in some regions anarchist cultural associations from the working men’s clubs to quire- and sports associations (Kaschuba/Warneken), which provided collective times and spaces to socialise and organise.

Post-fordism brought a change of the regime of time and space. Since the 1980s, many regions in Europe underwent a process of de-industrialisation. The center of the production logic increasingly shifted from industrial labour at the factory to immaterial labour performed predominantly but not exclusively in the service and cultural sector. Under the post-fordist regime, labour is to a lesser extent bound to a specific workplace, set working hours or professional identities. Rather, it is organised through a multiplicity of precarious job arrangements requiring and offering flexibility, mobility and constant acquisition of new skills. The hard separation between work and leisure with its clear-cut collective rhythm dictated by machine running times is giving way to a flexible use of time. Affective, creative and conceptual abilities previously bound to the space of leisure and privacy are being pulled into the production process. On the other hand, work-related activities, for instance the establishment of business relationships, acquisition of new skills, networking, or “just checking my email” increasingly occur in situations outside dedicated working time and spaces. Under these conditions, the type of working class sociability established under the fordist regime is not suited to pave the way for political collective action of precarious workers towards better conditions. One of the remits of the Mayday project in Milan was to search for the beginnings of new forms of sociability amongst precarious workers which would account for the post-fordist time-space regime. Conceptualising the city rather than the factory as the starting point of “the conspiracy of the precarious” was an important step in this direction.

Alternative, grassroots or radical media played an important role in most social movements since the traditional labour movement. Media repertoires were instrumental in creating visibility of social movements in public space as well as serving the purpose of internal communication. The boundaries of what constitutes “media” is fluid, depending on societal background, technologies available and historical situation. Since the French revolution, bourgeois movements turned the cultural format of public festivities into displays of dissent and political articulation (Dueding). In the 19th century, the labour movement, excluded from the mainstream political channels, established the streets as a medium for political articulation (Warneken, Strasse als Medium). As an alternative equivalent to the bourgeois and later the mass media, the emerging labour movement produced newspapers, magazines and newsletters (Thompson). In the 20th century, radio shows and moving images were added. The new social movements since the 1960 added video and community TV to their media repertoire. As mobilisation materials, media appeared as posters, flyers, stickers, and cards. During demonstrations and other protest events, placards and banners were carried along. Since the 1990s, new social movements increasingly developed digital media formats. The global protest movement re-vived carnivalesque formats including street performances, body sculptures, floats, masks and large puppets. Throughout their history, social movements have adapted and sometimes invented mediated formats to further their causes. Thus media activism can take many forms. The shift from fordism to post-fordism combined with the emergence of the new digital media implies a transformation of media activism. The priority given to the implementation of media practices throughout the Milan Mayday process suggests that media activists are once more pushing the boundaries of the concept of media as a mere representation of reality.

The particular combination of the social question as a contentious issue, the production of radical sociability as a strategy and the use of media as a tool characterised the Milan parades between 2001 and 2010. Each dimension was woven into the conceptual reflections and the practices involved in the creation of this new protest format. The interaction between these dimensions affected the framing of precarisation of work and life as a contentious issue and of precariousness as a source for the creation of political subjectivities. It had an impact on the mobilising techniques and generated the aesthetics, symbolism and experience of the protest format “Mayday Parade” itself. Euromayday Milan challenged the dominant ways to represent and speak about precarisation by making productive a wide range of cultural resources. Practices taken from popular culture, mass culture and movement culture were adapted and detourned to create a radical politics tailored to precarious realities. While the threesome “social question – sociability – media” can be found in many Euromayday Parades, it was shaped through practices in the specific local situation of Milan.

4 III. Milan: structure and political traditions

The Mayday Parades were conceptualised in close interaction with Milan’s economic structure, its political traditions and an embodied collective memory of its radical history. The chainworkers as one of the initiating groups and their allies and friends had envisaged a Europe wide movement of precarious people from the beginning (Q funkiest Mayday; Q Interview with chainworkers). Nevertheless the Mayday concept was consciously fine-tuned with the specific situation in Milan. It was rooted in a collective memory of the city's radical history embodied in the practices within the network of it's centri sociali, i.e. it's self-managed social centers.

The structural composition of this major global city with a population of about 1.300.000[7] in the city proper and over 4 million in the urban area[8] suggests a certain susceptibility to the issue of precarisation. After the reduction of large industrial companies in the last decades and the ensuing weakening of the traditional trade unions, its economy is predominated by a strong financial sector, the service sector and the cultural industries including fashion, media/advertising, design, communication and publishing. Sociologists are regarding the latter sectors as paradigmatic for the increase of immaterial labour and its ensuing, double-faced precarious conditions experienced by many of the white collar workers concentrated in the city of Milan. Combined with five universities, the cultural sectors of the local economy made Milan an attractive destination for visitors, students and young professionals from western countries (Urban project)[9]. Young western professionals thus represent one type of migration to Milan. As an industrial and metropolitan area, it also was the destination of several waves of internal migration. It attracted Italian workers from the South and became a preferred location for persecuted militants of the 1970 movements in Italy. More recently, immigration from abroad set in. Today, migrants, including those from North Africa, the former USSR and the Far East amount to 14% of the population.[10] These statistics do not include undocumented immigrants, although their presence is mentioned as a source of social tension.

Italy, and mainly the northern industrial-turned-service area around Milan, is frequently described as a laboratory for experimentation with new forms of political thought and practices (Hardt/Virno 1996:1-9). In Italian revolutionary politics, like in a laboratory, the production of theory is inextricably linked to the practice of experimentation. “The theorising, in fact, has ridden the wave of the movements over the last thirty years and has emerged as a collective practice” (Hardt/Virno 1996). In the 1960s and 1970s, an original reading of Marx inspired by the radical workers’ struggles culminated in the development of operaism. In this framework, new theoretical concepts (such as technical and political class composition, the mass worker, the refusal of work) were invented. Operaists saw the seeds for revolutionary politics at the center of the production process. Operating under a fordist regime, they identified the factory as the epicentre of both capitalist production and resistance. This led to the development of a new political methodology. Militant investigation or co-research served several purposes: the collaborative production of knowledge, the creation of interaction amongst workers and eventually the ability to develop new forms of industrial action (referencexxx).

Operaist concepts and methodology deeply influenced both the political culture and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Italy (Mezzadra 2009 abstract, Wright). Especially the various and sometimes opposed strands of Autonomia Operaia with their mix of factory and social collectives (Bologna 1980) drew from operaism. Alternative and participatory media, especially free radio stations and printed alternative media played an important role in bounding the different strands of Autonomia Operaia together, not only through broadcasts and publications, but also through festivities in public space. (See, for instance, the film “working slowly” about Radio Alice. Also described in Downing 2001). By the early 1980s the Italian state had succeeded to destroy Autonomia Operaia. However, a collective memory of this period in radical history with its focus on labour, sociability and alternative media continues to resonate in the practices of contemporary social movements in Milan, not least the Mayday project (Ruggiero?).

A collective memory of Milans radical history is embodied in the still thriving 'centri sociali'. In these squatted social centers, constituent parts of autonomia operaia continued to exist as a 'submerged network' (Melucci) (Membretti)[11]. While some of the militants of the 1970s went into “voluntary exile”, others stayed in Italy, particularly in metropolitan areas. In Milan a preferred area was Porta Ticinese, a neighbourhood on the edge of the center which had maintained a village-like structure, although a gentrification process set in in the early 1990s. Its narrow streets and the network of canals give the neighbourhood a picturesque appearance (Smagarcz). Porta Ticinese was the port area of Milan, traversed by canals, and a place where many migrants settled. This created an above average mixed population. These factors gave the neighbourhood its still present reputation as a tolerant and politically active neighbourhood (Smagarcz). Porta Ticinese was also quick in picking up sub-cultural trends. An activist, too young to have been there at the time, relates that it housed the first punk-shops in the 1970s (Alex Interview). Small, trendy shops grew out of the alternative economy. Today, travel-guides advise a shopping trip to Porta Ticinese for its combination of subcultural flair, boho-chic and chainstores created by a population of artists, architects and students. Nevertheless, social centers and squatted houses continue to exist in this area[12].

In their initial phase, most centri sociali face constant eviction. Some are eventually tolerated by local councils and some are being formally legalised. Run by collectives, they are mostly frequented by younger generations. With parties, concerts, performances and exhibitions, political meetings and assemblies, presentations and discussions with often renowned radical thinkers, they provide a mix of (sub-)cultural and political activities. Food and drinks can be prepared and served on most premises. Workshops for anything from printing to repairing bicycles are established, political information is displayed in infoshops or bookshops, and since the late 1990s, internet access is made available. Centri sociali not only provide infrastructure. They actively participate in the radical political scene by running campaigns, organising protests and symbolic interventions in public space as well as developing strategies. xxxSpread across the city, and each with a specific political or cultural profile, the centri sociali create an order, a navigation system for Milan's radical scene. Participation in one or the other social center aligns a participant with a preference for political directions, music styles, subcultural scenes. xxx

Many centri sociali are characterised by their extensive use of alternative media – print, radio, film and later the new digital communication technologies necessary to use the world wide web (Ruggiero 2000?).

In an article based on empirical research on centri sociali in Milan, sociologist of urban social movements and participant in the Italian 1970s and 1980s movements Vincenzo Ruggiero points out that “until today, some of the motives and practices inspiring the centri sociali can be regarded as a re-elaborated and re-contextualised legacy of the Italian 1970s” (Ruggiero 2001). As a central motive for participation in social centers, he identifies the “desire to ‘stay together’”. In a self-research by Milanese social centers conducted in 1995 and 1996, ‘sociability’ was given as the predominant motive, followed by attending cultural and political events – however most of the respondents of the latter group also emphasised their need for debate and a wish to overcome isolation. Drawing on classical sociology, Ruggiero interprets the movement of the centri sociali in Milan as a collective response to the inherent ‘loneliness’ of the city, which supposedly favours self-interest and hampers the establishment of meaningful and rich social ties.

As a second important point, Ruggiero argues that participants in centri sociali in their activities and reflections are regarding “the role and position one occupies in the productive process (…) as a crucial element for determining identity and shaping political subjectivity.” In discussions and practices within centri sociali, he identifies a constant concern for aspects of production and resource distribution as well as one's position in the production process. [13]

He substantiates this claim in three aspects. First, he points out that in his 1990s interviews, a materialistic analysis prevailed in the self-perceptions of centri sociali participants. Second, he notes the continuous efforts to establishing alternative micro-economies. As examples for experimentation with ways of obtaining income while establishing alternative livestyles, he lists the production of music and clothes, publishing activities, provision of education (Ruggiero 2001:book 116-119). More recently, other areas were added to this small-scale economy such as an alternative hostel and computer-, internet- and media production courses and services (Q: reload).[14]

Third, he presents an interpretation of Italian inner-city squatting in the 1970s as symbolic action aimed at access to the city's riches. In the configuration of Italian cities “with their fine medieval, Renaissance and neo-classical architecture” (Ruggiero 2001:111), occupation of historical centers symbolises a demand beyond the satisfaction of primary needs. Directed at the ‘surplus’, squatting became a ‘claim to luxury’. This claim was selective, it was applied to some goods and services, while others were rejected. For instance, the representative mainstream high culture was rejected, as a mass picketing at the renowned Scala Theatre at the opening night of the opera season in 1977 illustrates (Ruggiero 2001:111). For services such as electricity, telephone bills, rents, and the consumption of leisure goods such as records and cinema, activists engaged in the practice of ‘autoriduzione’ or collective self-reduction. A more recent version of this practice may be the use of peer-to-peer file-sharing. The practice of autoreduzzione implied both a critique of and a demand for certain goods.

The cursory description of Milan's economic composition, its radical history and collective memory embodied in the practices of the social centers shows that the threesome “social question – sociability – media” runs through the radical culture of Milan. In the context of Euromayday, these elements were re-arranged and adapted to changing conditions. Activists took the shift from Fordism to Post-Fordism into account and incorporated new digital technologies. They analysed and acted in the present through the lens of past practices. Past practices were moulded according to new conditions. The threesome of social question – sociability – media provides a model to make visible the connections between a collective memory of the radical politics of the 70s, the changing structure of the city and the strive to develop a new version of radical politics. In the mobilisation materials for Mayday, no connection to a collective memory of the 1970s is mentioned. Although the San Precario interventions frequently involved the appropriation of goods, this is consciously not referred to as auto-redduzione to avoid public alignment with the criminalised actions of 1970s . Nevertheless, a historical awareness is expressed in some documents.

In an early self-presentation, the chainworkers collective explained the motivation for their project as follows:

"Basically what we try to do, in our weekly meetings and CW mailing list, is to merge two working generations and two strands of radicalism presently at odds with each other in Europe and elsewhere. On the one hand, we want to make the young, ununionized part-timers and temp workers get in touch with the unionists and activists of the old working class. On the other hand we want to make media activism, as symbolized by Indymedia, Adbusters, RTmark etc, interact with labor struggles and union organizing.

After outlining their wish to connect the fordist and the post-fordist generation of politically aware workers and their desire to merge 90s media activism with labour struggles, they reflect on their own biographical experiences as workers, consumers, citizens and activists in Milan:

"Many in the ChainCreW have this strange profile of having a recent union past and a present working in Milano's media industry. Living in a country where commercial TV brought a dumb tycoon to power, we well understand the persuasive power of pop culture and advertising lexicon. Our intent is clearly to advertise a new brand of labor activism and revolt, i.e. subvertise, by using language and graphix geared to people who have no prior political experience other than the wear and toil of their bodies and minds in the giant outlets. We try to do so by constant reporting of labor conflicts and corporate misdeeds in malls, franchises, and megastores around the world, but also commenting on aspects of contemporary life, art, music related to commercial spaces and chainworking in them."

Immersed in Milan's media industry, open to trade-union as well as media activism and aware of the political power of corporate media as well as pop-culture and advertising, the chainworkers explain the techniques they are employing to create a new type of labour movement, taking into account the sociability of the entertainment industry and the imaginative power of mediated languages and imageries.

5 IV. Narrativity

Storytelling can be regarded as a form of movement culture (Polletta 2009:33). Wu Ming, a collective of Italian activist writers and cultural analysts, emphasises collective storytelling, or using their term, “radical mythopoesis” as a crucial component of Italian movements:

“Italy's always been an exciting laboratory. For many historical and social reasons, the Italian social movements were able to emerge as multitudes of people describing themselves by an endless, lively flow of tales, using those tales as weapons in order to impose a new imagery from the grassroots. When we talk about "myths", we mean stories that are tangible, made of flesh, blood and shit. As we tried to explain several times to people who live in other countries, mythopoesis is what enriches the Italian movements.” (Wu Ming 2000)

The emphasis on storytelling and the creation of new imageries – or mythopoesis - is echoed in the media activism in the context of the Milan Mayday Parades. Alternative media were not only used as transmitters for information, but predominantly as instruments for collective storytelling (Vanni).

The Mayday parades visualised, narrated and embodied the concept of precarity through a variety of media including posters, cards and stickers, themed vehicles, performance, giant puppets, street theatre, games, body sculpture, graffiti. Slogans, symbols and icons appeared on printed materials, websites and web-banners, T-shirts, banners, vehicles. En route, they were applied to vehicles, sign-posts, cash-points, buildings, billboards, waste-bins. They enhanced interaction amongst participants in activities like dancing, video-interviewing, playing collection games, applying signs to the surface of the city. They transgressed the set time of the parade, as they were also put to use in pickets, interventions and actions as well as in catchy radio jingles, videos and alternative publications.

Every year, the process of preparing the parade involved further refinement of the concept of precarity, precarisation, precariousness (Raunig). While the first two parades presented “il precariato” as a condition to be defied, in the 2003 slogan “the social precariat rebels” it had become a pugnacious, if tongue-in-cheek self-description: “The precariat is for postfordism what the proletariat was for fordism”. The next year, in rejection of “the narrative of the looser”[15], this confident self-representation was taken further as the Euromayday Netparade went online and a poster in bright yellows, reds and oranges showed three smiling contortionists against the backdrop of a rising sun. Precarity had shifted from a condition of plain misery to a double-faced condition, which contained in itself the means necessary to overcome it.

Activists working in the media, culture and communication industries or in the service sector, groups and individuals engaging in alternative healthcare, queer politics, ecologism, hacktivism, programming and filesharing, studying, vegan lifestyle, raising children, knowledge-sharing, alternative agriculture[16] engaged in a search for subversive and powerful strategies to deal with precarious conditions of life and work. The key characteristics of precarious lives they identified echoed those in the literature on postfordism (referenz): the impossibility to make long-term plans, the need to juggle several jobs, to multi-task, to constantly improve one’s market value by aquiring new skills and actively building networks, to engage in immaterial and affective labour.

Developing their concept of precarity and aligning it to their own everyday situations, Mayday activists and their friends produced a growing collection of interconnected narrations and visualisations. The reflective process materialised in a variety of ways. Every year, a poster was produced along with small media formats like cards or stickers. Since 2005, interactive mediated games were developed with the aim to enhance the fluid, communicative choreography of the parade. For instance, a collection album disseminated the narrative of the precarious “Imbattibili” who transformed their strategies to survive in precarious conditions into superpowers. These Unbeatables were visualised as comic figures. In subsequent years, the Chainworkers experimented with other popular formats, for instance tarot cards, puzzles and tattoos (Vanni/storytelling).

In line with such narrations, vehicles were decorated, performances were rehearsed, songs were written, radio programs were produced, militant investigations were conceptualised. While the preparation process itself was productive, this productivity unfolded during the Mayday Parades. Mayday became an ongoing invitation to write one’s own experience into the narration of precarity, and to become a confident precarious rebel rather than a victim of unfortunate circumstances or even a looser who could not hold down a job.

Narrativity was thus embedded in the sociability of the Mayday Parades. In turn, it helped to enhance their social, interactive character. The Mayday parades were conceptualised not only as a demonstration, but as a space where a new sociability of the precarious could be imagined and be made productive. The Mayday parades were a way to implement the idea of the city of the new place of production – not only the production of value through immaterial goods in the service and cultural sector, but also the production of new radical subjectivities or, in the words of the chainworkers, the “precarious conspiracy” (Q Reader).

6 V. Media practices and centri sociali

“Media activism” in the context of the Euromayday parades included several layers of practices. The first layer can be described as appropriation of technology. When the Chainworkers collective started to connect knowledge and service workers around the turn of the century, they “had this idea of using the web politically” (Q int 13a). In this early phase, it was important to set up and get used to digital communication channels for internal organising as well as the dissemination of counter information. Thus mailing lists and the webzine “chainworkers” were created. The use of these channels required the acquisition of practical skills and technical infrastructure as well as their cultural shaping (Wajkman), as online communication follows its own logic. The process of appropriation was supported by a wider trend in the Milan social center scene. Since the 1980s, an Italian underground hacktivist network had developed, emphasizing “social hacking” as a networking practice. In the late 1990s, this gave rise to country-wide annual hackmeetings, where collective information, knowledge and practical skills were shared with the objective to promote critical use of technological tools (Bazzichelli 2006:164). In 1999, the second Italy-wide Hackmeeting was hosted at the Deposito/Bulk social center[17] in Milan. Amongst the “nerds, activists, and curious passers-by” (Q interview b.) who participated in this meeting, recognition of the need for a permanent physical space equipped with hardware to continue the collective process of critical appropriation led to the foundation of the first Milan Hacklab, LOA. The development of this group of hacktivists and their physical space was closely connected to the dynamics of the social center scene. One activist describes the relationship between hacktivists and social centers:

"Social centers where the necessary culture broth for hacktivism. Hacktivism would not have been possible without squats AND without nerds :) Nerds needed a place to discuss and to find other reasons to use technology. Squats needed someone to face the challenge of issues like copyright and digital rights from a non-institutional, libertarian perspective. It was the perfect symbiosis. Social centers offered the ideal protected environment where geeks and hacktivist could discuss without any limit to their debate, while offering at the same time a place where the outcome of the discussion could become public and socially shared. Of course also social centers profited from hacklab activities and the like. Their initiative contributed to making the social center the hype for countercultures and youth groups in all of Milan. They brought people, ideas, and energies." (interview b.)

After its eviction shortly after the Hackmeeting, the Deposito-Bulk collective squatted a new location near the cemetry monumentale, a cemetery dedicated to, as one of the LOA collective puts it, “great artists and "lords" of Milan”. The LOA hacklab collective actively participated in the squatting, renovating, setting up and running of the new centro sociale, where they established the first Milan hacklab:

“We set up a lab with machines to be hacked, free connection spaces and a classroom to hold courses which were one of our main activities for at least 2-3 years and attracted crowds of people. Nobody did linux sysadmin courses for free at the time, especially with a knack on security network and hacking” (Email Interview, see also Q reload txt in mute).

In 2003, LOA left Deposito Bulk partly motivated by political differences, partly by a desire to “grow up” as an independent collective rather than a user of an existing social center. This was followed by a nomad phase, which resulted in the foundation of numerous internet and digital media facilities in existing social centers: "We spent around 1 year doing workshops and activities spread all over the squats in Milan trying to become a sort of networked collective”. In this period, the LOA collective “happened to install, configure and establish tech places around many squats in Milan (Conchetta, Garibaldi, Torchiera, PRK251, Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa, ecc ecc)." The nomad phase had two important outcomes. On one hand, it turned the LOA collective into a hub within the network of social centers, familiar with and personally known to many social center collectives. On the other hand, it added an ICT infrastructure to the network of the centri sociali.

In 2004, the LOA collective made a fresh start. Under the new name ReLOAd, the group made two attempts to squat a place in the lively district Isola, now part of the “Quartiere della Moda”, but were evicted (Q squatnet ascii: interview b). At the same time, the collective which run the social center Pergola Tribe in the same area was dissolving. They invited ReLOAd to take over the social center. The offer was accepted, and the place was re-opened under the name Pergola Move. The new concept was to involve many groups and collectives. As a result, for the next three years, activities in Pergola included il Postello, a self-managed youth hostel[18], a vegan restaurant, a very well known reggae disco and a second hand clothes shop both run by the old Pergola Tribe collective, a bookstore plus infoshop, a theatre, a dj rehearsal studio, a fully featured web-radio, and the reLOAd Mindcafe, a place to do workshop, seminars, meeting, free internet access, video screenings. Pergola became, according to one of the ReLOAd collective, a place where most of the Milan collectives found a safe haven to relate to each other and to build projects." (See reload folder 16 and interview b.) xxxinclude Euromayday!xxx

xx claim that alternative media projects often take on the function to connect political groups of a wider activist spectrum, as many media activists tend to be involved in one or several issue-related campaigns in addition to their media activism. The account of the LOA and reLOAd collectives supports this hypothesis. In the seven years of their existence, these groups added valuable ICT infrastructure to the network of social centers in Milan, and run a social center which catered for a wide variety of social and political needs. As the chainworkers collective was also involved in the Pergola Move social center, it became an important hub for Mayday related activities, meetings, events and discussions.

. Acknowledging a need for independent servers providing autonomous internet services for social movements (Bazzichelli 2006:163 ff), people involved in the Hacklab initiative set up their own web servers. Under the name Autistici/ Inventati, they begun to provide a technical infrastructure which was controlled by social movements rather than commercial providers. According to their self-description, this collective, still operating in 2010, emerged in 2001

“from the encounter of several individuals and collectives engaged in technology, privacy, digital rights and political activism. Our fundamental aim is to provide free communication tools on a wide scale, while favouring the choice of free rather than commercial ways to communicate. We wish to inform and train people about the need to protect their privacy and to escape the indiscriminate looting perpetrated by governments and corporations alike both on data and personalities” (Autistici/Inventati Website, online: )

In 2000, Indymedia Italy was set up as a media website for the antiNATO mobilisation in Bologna. The indymedia project provides multimedia open publishing platforms for communication amongst social movements and their sympathisers (Garcelon 2006). At this time, the platform was used tactically: By making it publicly known that “an international media network would cover the anti nato mobilitations and keep a close eye on what happens” (Q interview b), tactical media activists used the notoriety of the Indymedia project to enhance mobilisation. Unexpectedly, the project continued after the antiNATO mobilisations, strongly supported by participants in the hacktivism scene. Within one weekend, the number of indymedia volunteers raised from two to thirty. During the 2001 protests against the G8 in Genoa, Indymedia Italy became a crucial resource for a movement that was heavily repressed by the government's police forces.

“Basically they used the notoriety of IMC to pump the mobilisations, but had no intention of keeping it online and alive and of what it would become. But then it manage to stay. And the hacklab network fills in the gaps: indymedia collective goes from 2 members to 30 in a weekend (most of A/I collective and other hacktivists) and soon after that genoa g8 2001 happens. Genoa G8 makes italy imc what it has been, even if most of the people from italy imc did not want to go to genoa g8!!!!”

During its first active phase between 2001 and 2005, Indymedia Italy was involved in most social movement activities, including the Milan Mayday Parades. This participation was not restricted to reporting about events in retrospect, but included provision of technical infrastructure for real-time reporting. For instance, at the 2003 Milan Mayday Parade, indymedia volunteers set up a physical media center[19]. In 2004, together with the hacklab collective, they connected the parade to digital space by setting up a wireless network covering its route[20]. The idea was to “broadcast stuff from one section of the demo to the others.” (int b.)

Thus the emerging Mayday project had access to autonomous servers to host their mailing lists and websites; calls and reports on the Mayday Parades were disseminated on the indymedia italy platform, technical and physical infrastructure was provided by the hacklab network and indymedia. Not least, the Mayday project included the debates about concepts like reality-hacking and social hacking through close collaboration with the initiative Reload.

The second layer of media activism was visualisation, i.e. the translation of narratives and concepts into catching graphics, and to disseminate them not only through traditional media like print or radio, but also through digital media channels. The visualisation process involved competent handling of software and visual skills, and also a humorous, tongue-in-cheek attitude. The Milan Mayday Posters display a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Existing but previously unconnected signs and symbols were re-contextualised with the issue of precarity. For instance, the 2001 poster shows a smiling Jurij Gagarin with a speech bubble displaying the words: “I say: Mayday Mayday.” This slogan was also used in mobilising advertisements on commercial radio. The popular icon of the USSR cosmonaut in the context of a demonstration produced a moment of irritation and questioning. There is no immediate connection between the first human in outer space and precarity. Neither can we presume that the population of Milan was aware of the shipping emergency call “Mayday Mayday”. The detourned sign invited to take pleasure in a playful and humorous approach to a serious issue. In fact, the slogan became very popular not only in Milan, but also in other mayday cities. “It was catchy, man, really catchy. Everybody went: I say: Mayday! Mayday!” (Int 13a). The chainworkers, who were responsible for the posters, were inspired by the subvertising techniques of the US group Adbusters. Combining advertising and subversion, Adbusters visually distort advertisements and thus change their affirmative meaning into a critical one. The chainworkers extended the subvertising technique by applying it not only to denounce corporations or authorities, but also to enhance the visual presence of the Mayday parade.

Since 2004, the Chainworkers added a third layer of media activism by embedding their subvertising practice in interventions and performances in urban space. Media were used to create situations which encouraged interaction. For instance, the narrative of San Precario, the Saint for precarious people, provided a framework for numerous interventions. His carefully designed image was spread in the popular format of a small prayer card, complete with a prayer dedicated to him on the back. It also circulated online, on posters, and not least during the Euromayday Parades. Similarly elaborated was the narrative about Serpica Naro, an invented Japanese fashion designer who officially participated in the Milan fashion week in 2005. In an elaborate fake (KG) supported by professional PR materials, “Serpica Naro” held a fashion show displaying clothes designed to meet the needs of precarious workers. Like San Precario, Serpica Naro was present in all subsequent Mayday Parades.

These layers of media activism – appropriation of technology, visualisation techniques and the staging of interventionist performances – operated in close interaction with each other. Although most collectives specialised in one or the other approach, many individuals participated in several collectives or crossed paths in various activities in the centri sociali. Thus communication was kept flowing. As they are open, fluid and informal, these collaborations are difficult to pin down as official collaborations. One of the activists of this period emphasises:

"For at least some years (in Milan at least) there was this aura of multiple projects working toghether without the need to officially state the fact. It was a sort of fluid network where people were part of many projects and collectives and tried every time to find the connecting point of the experience instead of looking for where the dividing issue stood. So it's difficult to state there where official relationships between many of these groups. At the same time it's impossible to deny that they cooperated deeply among them."

"It was as if a group of people devised a multiple head collective where other people could connect to one or all of the "heads". It was naturally issue-driven: initiative on work/precarity started from cw; initiative on digital rights/copyright started from reLOAd; initiative on media activism started from IMC. And then it was all interconnected, with the people participating in all the collectives as channels of information and political debate between the different groups. It was very intense and wearing, but it made sure that everybody could participate in the things they felt best and at the same time contribute to a wider plan of redesigning of society."

Media activism enhanced communication amongst activists and their friends and sympathisers as well as communication with a wider public. In relation to the Mayday project, media practices were part of the collective shaping of representations of the precarious. Alternative media represented precarious people in their multi-facetted live worlds through the production of circulation of creatively constructed narratives based on everyday experiences. In the Mayday parades, media were put to work to shape a representation of the precarious as a collective actor. The Imbattibili collection album, for instance, helped to prevent the fluid, open parade from freezing into the solid block structure known from traditional demonstrations[21]. As the individual collection cards were distributed from different trucks, participants were gently forced to move along the parade to complete their collections and swap cards with other participants.

The Chainworkers conceptualised the media they produced as “media sociali” (Chainworkers Reader). With this term, they emphasize the sociability-producing qualities of media:

"Mayday is a "social media" and for this represents a way to put and put oneself in relation, cooperate and conspire. It's a communication tool that enables social subjects to represent and participate relations, unwilling to be victim of the reproduction of the goods. Its result goes beyond any definition and constantly exceeds itself. And really it's a network of individualities more than political organisations that has created the parade, each with his own story, with his own load of desires, passions and demands."

The concept of “media sociali” is not to be confused with “social media” as it is used in the marketing and business literature. In these contexts, it is defined as “Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content“ (Kaplan/ Haenlein 2010). In contrast, the chainworkers emphasised the social productivity of media both online and in the material world. In their logic, interaction and sociability generated by media sociali are precisely not adaptable to commercial purposes. While they do invite participants to put their own subjectivities in interaction with the concept of precarity, this process is situated outside commercial value production.

7 Conclusion

8 Appendix

List of online sources

presently 50, collected on Excel

List of interviews and ethnographic conversations

(Choice of reports and images)

- Mayday Milan / Provisional Timeline (June 2010):

(Sources: Websites of the projects and social centers mentioned, articles and interviews with participants - mistakes and inconsistencies are mine, mh)

1990 Social Center Pergola Tribe squatted in Isola neighbourhood

1997 Deposito Bulk Social Center squatted in an abandonned school in Via Don Sturzo, literally two steps away from the Quartiere della Moda (the "fashion district", it encompasses what once were different districts: garibaldi-gioia-isola)

1998 First Hackmeeting: The idea to have a hackmeeting came out of digital media initiatives and experiences during the 1990s: , stranonetwork, avana, and decoder (Bazzichelli on Hacklabs and italian underground).

1998: Metropolix squatted. It was a side squat of the first LSOA Bulk experience. In 1998 people from LSOA squatted an old and huge house owned by the town. They used it as living quarter and as the first self-managed youth hostel ever. Metropolix was evicted at the very beginning of the year 2000. The Metropolix experience was one of the inspiration for the Postello inside Pergola (the self managed hostel ReLOAd developed).

1999 Second Hackmeeting: The second Hackmeeting took place in the social center Bulk, described as "a student social center" and the political center of the more experimental part of the movement in Milan since 1997.

1999 LOA conceived: After this hackmeeting, “the people who met to setup the event (nerds, activists, curious passer-bys) decided to go on doing things about technology, communication, digital rights and so on. and the hacklab was born. but it was not until the next 2 years in the new Bulk site that the experience really took flight. (see mute article)

1999 Social Center (Bulk?) is evicted - one of the chainworkers describes this as a formative experience leading to participation in the Chainworker project and the idea for Mayday

1999 Chainworkers starts (Webmagazine, Pickets...) “I cannot really recall if we started chainworkers in 1999 or in 2000. For sure 2000 was the year it began to rise :)” see chainworkers book and old chainworkers website.

1999 (Nov) Accompanying the protests against the WTO in Seattle, a social center (Bulk?) is decorated entirely with maps and info about Seattle. Some activists are not impressed. (Interview with 1 of chainworkers)

2000 "LSOA Bulk (now also called Millenium Squat) moves to Via Niccolini in china town neighbourhood near the monumentale, the cemetery dedicated to great artists and "lords" of Milan, only 1 km from the previous location. LOA hacklab participates in the squatting, renovating, setting up and activities of the new squat" and establishes the first hacklab: “We set up a lab with machines to be hacked, free connection spaces and a classroom to hold courses which will be one of our main activities for at least 2-3 years and will attract crowds of people (nobody did linux sysadmin courses for free at the time, especially with a knack on security network and hacking)” LSOA Bulk is hosting the LOA hacklab.

2000 Indymedia Italy starts in 2000 as a media website for the antiNATO mobilitation in bologna. It starts as an hoax basically. by m. p. and void on italian media. they went around saying that the "international media network would cover the anti nato mobilitations and keep a close eye on what happens". Basically they used the notoriety of IMC to pump the mobilitations, but had no intention of keeping it online and alive and of what it would become. But then it manage to stay. And the hacklab network fills in the gaps: indymedia collective goes from 2 members to 30 in a weekend (most of A/I collective and other hacktivists) and soon after that genoa g8 happens. Genoa G8 makes italy imc what it has been, even if most of the people from italy imc did not want to go to genoa g8!!!!

2001 IS A FATAL YEAR

2001 (March) Autistic/Inventati servers set up. "A/I experience comes out mainly of the hacklab/hackmeeting/indymedia/ network. A group of young activist from florence (mainly connected to the CEcco Rivolta Squat and to the Sgamati online media activist group), another one from Milan (LOA hacklab trhough and through) and some people from bologna, turin, rome, naples (especially void from bologna) started to discuss the idea of a self-managed server in year 2000. After meeting around italy (at the side of demos or other initiatives) we decided to launch the project. It never had a PHYSICAL space. It started (and it still lives) as an online collective of very tight related geek friends :). A/I does not, never did and never will have a place. But the LOA hacklab MI collective had much to do with its birth and still has much to do with its survival."

2001 Indymedia Italy turns from a hoaxy tactical media intervention into an ongoing open publishing platform run by a collective. Italy IMC and Euromayday connect with each other in several ways (but they are distinct processes):

- lots of activist heavily involved in italy imc are involved in emd as well

- there was a time in which italy imc tended to be present to any major movement

event

2001 (May) Mayday Parade no 1 in Milan, starting from Porta Ticinese like in all ensuing years. In June 2010, there are several social centers in Porta Ticinese: cox18 (via conchetta 18), up until one week ago Laboratorio Zero, and many squatted houses in via gola / via pichi.

2001 (18.-22.7.2001) Genoa G8 protests

2002 Firenze ESF - autonomous space Hub - polymedia lab. Participation from Milan?

2002 Mayday Parade no 2 in Milan

2003: IMC street media center and webradio live broadcast during emd parade

2003 Mayday Parade no 3 in Milan. Participation from all over Italy. Precarity as a double-faced condition rather than only an imposition.

2003 Firenze initiative (?). Decision to empower local imcs. Milano indymedia group comprises about 30 people coming from different social centers in Milan. The group was "led" by the hacktivist part of it. Milano IMC decided not to have an official site (physical location) but participated in the networked nomad location of LOA at the time. A couple of places turned out to be particularly used: Pergola was home to a webradio and an effort to make pirate FM radio (since Milan movement radio was completely hostage of the political decision of their hosting place, the Leoncavallo); Connecta (a free internet café opened by a part of the Bulk collective together with Milano IMC and LOA hacklab in another squat in the Isola district, Garigliano Social Squat). After sometime Milano IMC activity basically followed reLOAd activity and the collective responsible for Milano IMC activity lost most of its members and production when reLOAd ended in 2006.

2003 LOA leaves Bulk for political disagreement and the desire to "grow adult" as a independent collective and not as a insider collective. Nomad Phase of LOA:

"We spend around 1 year doing workshops and activities spread all over the squats in milan trying to become a sort of networked collective. (We founded many spaces inside other squats that will be used by other collective to do a lot of stuff)"

"Loa abandoned Bulk to welcome a 1-year period of nomada hacktivism that happened to install, configure and estabilish tech places around many squats in milan (Conchetta, Garibaldi, Torchiera, PRK251, Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa, ecc ecc)."

2004 (29. February) San Precario is born. Pickets combined with appropriation actions at chainstores. The Saint of the Precarious will be present in all the ensuing Milan Mayday Parades. He will re-appear as Santa Precaria in Sevilla 2005, in Koeln, and Terrassa 2008, and as a trade union figure-head in Austria. His prayer cards are translated into several languages and circulate in activist circles across Europe. (Tari Vanni article)

2004 Reload starts: Then we decide we need a place to call our own. We decide to squat a place and call ourselves ReLOAd. We squat two places in Isola Neighbourhood (very lively district soon to be gentrified) but are evicted The old collective who squatted Pergola (Pergola Tribe) in 1990 is dying. They ask us to take over. We accept to do so, but ask for the place to change project, name and open itself up. ReLOAd collective enters Pergola and Pergola Tribe becomes Pergola Move.

2004 (March) domain registered, website goes online before Mayday 2004.

2004 Pergola Move starts in Via Angelo della Pergola, 5. Pergola is now run by Reload, together with the old Pergoal Tribe collective and many more groups: "In 1 year we manage to close the "housing" experience of Pergola Tribe and we start to involve other associations and collective in the place."

2004 (June) alternative hostel Postillo in Pergola Move established (postello.). In 2010, the hostel is still there, but run by different people with a different concept (website postello)

2004 (April/ May) Euromayday Netparade online

2004 (May) Mayday no 4. Mayday becomes Euromayday as Barcelona joines the Mayday of the precarious with its own parade. "We (Milan imc and hacklab people) tried to broadcast stuff from one section of the demo (emd) to the others. But generally speaking imc coverage was part of the emd as long as imc was really alive" (ie: until 2004-2005)

2004 (October) Precarity assembly at beyond ESF autonomous event parallel to ESF London (programme on ). cw participated. Greenpepper magazine. Precarity ping pong. Precarity DVD including material from milan and bna. Middlesex declaration, echoes cw texts.

2005 (Feb) Serpica Naro Project born of chainworkers and reload to liven up the 2005 mayday. Outstanding success. Serpica Naro will be present in all ensuing Euromayday Parades. After the 2005 intervention, it continues as a partly international collective of alternative fashion production. (see website, imc reports, Mattoni article)

2005 (May) "The funkiest conspiracy!" 120000 participants. Euromayday parades in 16 european cities. Imbattibili collection albums produced. Designed for Milan, the imbattibili figures will travel to other cities, for instance as the band "superprecarias" in Malaga, and superheroe figures in Hamburg and at the G8 protests in Heiligendamm.

2006 Bulk social center leaves Millenium Bulk in exchange for 200.000 euros

2006 (March) ReLOAd collective dies (11.3.06 is the date of the big fuckup. That summer reload officially ends.) and leaves Pergola to what was left of Bulk collective. After that is just decline.

2006 (May) Milan Mayday Parade no 6. Suvival kit.

2006 (dec) Imc Italy takes a break. Almost none of the original group of people making it alive 5 years earlier are involved at this point.

2006 intelligence precaria is born as a network. and intellingence precaria is the attmempt by chainworkers to grow into a network collective made up by the different collectives working on precarity in lombardia.

2007 (May) Milan Mayday Parade no 7. Tarot Cards. The network intelligence precaria starts action with free papers distributed throughout the city (called: "city of gods" taunting the free press "city")

2008 (Feb 25 - check) Euromayday European meeting in Berlin, where a preparation meeting of the european social forum was held at the same time. Chainworkers (and ex cw) participated. (there were a few other transnational emd meetings which are not included here, also important the precarity webring initiative)

2008 : Metablog included. RSS feeds from those emd related pages that have this facility.

2008 chainworkers ceases to exist

2008 the intelligence and the city of gods websites merge in the portal

2008 (May) Milan Mayday Parade no 8. Puzzle? Shared Mayday in Aachen on the occasion of Karlspreis.

2008 (july) Imc Italy back online, syndicated version. Hardly any of the initial volunteers are still participating.

2009 (May) Milan Mayday Parade no 9. Theme: crisis. Pedal-powered sound systems?

2010 (May) Milan Mayday Parade no 10. More soundsystems from party people. (see list of participating groups)

2010 (May or June?) webzine is closed and turned into an archive

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[1] Interview Paolo

[2] To explain the ethymology of this popular name, Massimiliano Priore, a Milan-based journalist offers several hypotheses. One meaning of cicca in popular dialect is cigarette end. Thus the name would refer to the „catamoeucc“ who collected cigarette or cigar ends to fabricate new ones. Cica can also refer to drunkenness, a reference to the high density of drinking places in the area. Cica can also stand for nothing, referring to the poverty of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Finally, cicca can be understood in relation to the word cica, derived from the spanish word for girl, chica, and meaning prostitute. Q

[3] See photo Theatrix

[4] New York Times, 3.4.2005. Online:

[5] Call: ;

[6] Globalproject, Hamburg

[7] Wikipedia, based on statistics of the Instituto Nazionale di Statistica, 1. Jan 2009. Online: (accessed 15.5.10)

[8] Wikipedia, based on statistics of the conservative thinktank Demographia. Online: .

[9]

[10] Statistics of the Instituto Nazionale di Statistica, 1. jan 2009. Online: ()

[11] See, for instance, Andrea Membretti’s article about the Milan social center Leoncavallo, online:

[12] In June 2010, two social centers exist in the area: Cox 18 in Via Conchetta 18, and the now evicted Laboratorio Zero. Additionally many squatted houses can be found in via Gola / via Pichi.Interview B.

[13] Based on his empirical research in Milanese social centers, Ruggiero challenges an analysis of New Social Movements which regards them as a predominantly cultural protest. He emphazises that the movement of the centri sociali never seized the link between cultural and socio-political struggles. While these locations provide a space for alternative culture, they are also very aware of issues of production. This is for instance expressed in their efforts to establish alternative micro-economies.

[14] In one case, activists used their creative media skills to set up a guerrilla marketing agency, some of whose work oscillated between political prank and commodification of social movements -

[15] Interview Paolo

[16] This characterisation can be deduced from materials of the movement, including the “Imbattibili”, a series of 19 figures, each produced by a group or individual connected to the Milan Mayday Parade.

[17] Website hackmeeting, see list. Interview B. describes it as a “students social center”

[18] This idea stemmed from the 1998 social center Metropolix. Il Postello still exists in 2010, but managed by different people in a different way, see website ilpostello.

[19] Quelle mailing list datum and interview b

[20] Interview Alex

[21] Interview Paolo

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