Bologna, 9 June 2024 – There is a question to be resolved within the protest movements against the war in Palestine. The issue of harassment publicly reported by some activists, who allegedly suffered abuse in the so-called “spaces of political intersectionality” which saw them in the streets alongside other collectives and groups driven by the common objective of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Groups that, according to ‘Stray cats in complicity and solidarity’, “they reproduce, hide and normalize male violence and harassment in their spaces and in their assemblies, silencing the comrades who have tried to denounce these facts”.
Facts which never reached the table of the police or carabinieri, but managed through the methods of ‘transformative justice’. That is, communicating them only within the reference groups, with the aim of taking measures autonomously, isolating or removing the perpetrators of violent conduct. A modus agendi which however, as the signatories of the dozens of flyers and banners that have appeared in the university area in recent days explain, have instead led to the isolation of the victims, with the ‘executioners’ firmly “at the head of the procession”. Hence the choice of public protest: “We are furious and fed up of being deprived of spaces that should be of liberation and which instead become places of oppression”, write the activists.
Explaining how “gender violence it is never a priority in the movements, there is always a hierarchy of struggles: with this excuse male violence is invisibilised and the comrades who speak about it are isolated”. That is, the girls explain, the comrades who report abuse suffered at demonstrations or in the of common moments with other groups are silenced, with the vulgar philosophy of “dirty clothes are washed at home”.
And the girls explain that they are victims twice over: not only do they suffer harassment, but they are also accused of having asked for it, of having ‘provoked’, expressing themselves and their bodies freely, the conduct of the harassers. “We become deserving of solidarity only when we are killed”, is the cry of the girls: “And it is vicious – they write again – who suggests that publicly denouncing means betraying the cause”.
They refuse the accusation of “spitting on the cause” for having decided not to remain silent, opposing the policy of silence that is imposed on them so as not to ‘dirty’ the reputation of the group: “We are unconditionally on the side of Palestine and its resistance – they say – We do not accept that the power of the decolonial squares is undermined by silenced behavior regarding abusers. We know that these men have committed violence on multiple occasions. We know that the relevant political community was largely informed of this covering up this violence and removing those who suffered it was totally deliberate.” And they promise: they won’t stay silent. “We will not leave political spaces to rapists and beaters.”
