On January 16, 2007 we assembled the first structure of what would become the Presidio permanente, or Permanent Encampment. It was a cold and foggy day. A few days earlier U.S. Ambassador Spogli had presented his ultimatum: "The United States requires a definitive response on the new U.S. base at Dal Molin by January 19th."

The Presidio was initially created with the idea of remaining until that date in order to demonstrate the determination of the citizens of Vicenza to the Italian government, which at the time had not declared its position, though it had often expressed a desire to reconsider the issue in light of the will of the local community. Instead, that same day, while we were frenetically working to erect the structure, Prime Minister Romano Prodi declared from abroad "I am not opposed to the American project." The news hit us like a cold shower. From that moment on, the Presidio became permanent and the political activity became an everyday happening founded on the participation and determination of many women and men who, coming from very diverse political cultures, social groups, and experiences, identified a common objective and created new forms of action yet to be tried.

The Presidio permanente became a melting pot of ideas, a daily round of interaction in which everyone has something to say and the right to express it. It was for these characteristics that the tent of Presidio permanente became over months, on one hand the most beautiful metaphor of this movement – a symbol of resistance and collaboration – on the other hand an object of criticism and attacks by those – in good or bad faith – who are nostalgic for the forms of organization and historic political action, where organizations and groups compete for political space and where the practices of decision making are standardized and tied down by weights and counterweights, alliances and compromises.

COMMUNITY AND TRANSVERSALITY

To talk about Vicenza means talking about a city that has for decades faced the presence of an important U.S. military base with indifference. The Ederle barracks, whose presence is today challenged by a large part of the citizenry, dates back to the 1950’s with the redeployment of U.S. forces in Europe and the withdrawal of troops from Austria. Alongside it, other military structures were built within Vicenza’s city limits making the city one of the fundamental centers for the logistics and command structure of the United States. It is well known that in past years Vicenza was never a city of "movements" or protests. There have been some significant initiatives in reaction to national and international events that however had little impact on the culture and sensibility of the local community. It is for this reason that many have defined our city as the "Sacristy of Italy" characterized by an overwhelming loyalty to the principal governing party, the Christian Democrats, and by an inclination to hard work at the expense of social involvement and politics.

The Vicenza movement, born in opposition to the construction of a new U.S. military base at Dal Molin faces up to this past of political apathy and weak mobilization and represents a break with decades of conformity. In fact, on one hand it harnesses energies and attitudes that for decades had remained dormant and unexpressed outside of private homes and the local pubs, and on the other hand strongly redefines the political culture that for many years had remained on the margins of society. In Vicenza a totally new political space has emerged in which identity, conviction, practice, and concepts are all open to discussion to be dissected and reassembled.

Many times in these past months we have emphasized the "transversality" that characterizes us, but with this term we don’t want to simply indicate a sum of diverse identities that form a strategic alliance to realize a common goal, which however leaves the boundaries and differences unaltered. For us transversality means a breaking down of boundaries, the construction of a space for dialogue that can generate a collective growth and a cross-fertilization between different practices. Transversality is synonymous with collective reasoning inasmuch as the political message is the fruit of discussion and a sharing of ideas. We don’t want to hide ourselves behind one finger; our path is not without its contradictions and differences. But what counts most today is the metamorphosis, or the capacity to give life to a laboratory of collective discussion where everyone participates.

It is one of the points of strength of this movement because it makes the Permanent Presidio a common space. For this reason, we like to call ourselves a community. Ours is not an action orientated towards an ideology but a daily project that creates a common sensibility and as a consequence, a new culture that has as its founding principles the repudiation of war, the defense of the common good, and the creation of new participatory forms. These three points were not taken for granted when we started down this road: it was a process of collective growth, of debate, and discussion to embrace these themes together, putting them at the center of our movement and organizing in such a way that they don’t remain confined just to the neighborhoods adjacent to the airport of Dal Molin. Vicenza is not a "nimby" movement (not in my backyard) because it has learned to carry forward an abstract plan as well as concrete and local demands.

Defending our territory we have learned to appreciate the value of the land and of the common good. Refusing a military base we have constructed a culture of peace. Suffering impositions we have experienced the importance of participation. It has been a journey in becoming, taken step after step, a "walk by questioning" as the indigenous communities of Chiappas have taught us. It is a journey that has a precise point of departure, - the new U.S. military base of Dal Molin, - but knows no final destination.

POLITICS AND SOCIABILITY

In the space of a few months, the movement’s permanent encampment, known as the Presidio permanente, has become the physical and visible symbol of the movement, "No Dal Molin." It stands as an icon of Vicenza’s determination to protect its city from outsiders. The Presidio is where weekly meetings are attended by hundreds of people. The encampment is not, however, limited to political activity. It has, in fact, become, as Father Gallo points out, Vicenza’s premier place to meet and to socialize. It has actually replaced the city’s traditional meeting places, the town’s piazzas, as the best place to meet and socialize. The encampment’s big tent constantly hosts dinners, parties, debates and study groups. As the Presidio’s meetings take place, far from work-related, or profit-oriented locations, a new kind of social activity, one that is more serious and more inter-related, is beginning to evolve. For over a year now people have been meeting regularly as members of a permanent assembly, and, as one woman pointed out, "here at the Presidio, no one ever indulges in small talk, no one ever talks about the weather." The point is well made because social and political interaction are not mutually exclusive. Socializing is actually the basis for political activity. Our socializing has been the motor that increased our numbers, helped us attain our political objectives and, in the end, defined us to the outside world. And its effect on Vicenza has been even more remarkable. Like a sock turned inside out, the city has reacted to our activities with drastic and irreversible changes to the way it evaluates events and pursues its own political agendas.

The No Dal Molin Festival which takes place in the fall of each year has also made a critical contribution to the organization’s determination to socialize. The Festival not only witnessed actions such as the planting of trees within the interior of Dal Molin, debates, workshops and discussions on the Issues, but also the building of additional places to meet and socialize. Hundreds of people volunteered to raise tents, organize and run special events and attend to the work required by the tent city’s kitchen and catering service and, in the end, lower the tents and pack everything away for the next Festival. All in all, tens of thousands of people participated in the Fall Festival motivated by a strong desire to show their support for the objectives that have animated our movement. Therefore it would be dangerously wrong to minimize the socializing aspect of our program. To do so would condemn us as a minor, specialized and limited movement capable of protesting but incapable of bringing pressure to bear on the decision-making processes of those who govern us. And this is not our case. By staying together, by confronting and acknowledging our diversities and our common hope, we end up by building agreement of action amongst us. We’ve now been together and at work for a long time and there is nothing to suggest that our determination to prevent the construction of the United State’s most important military base in Europe is beyond our capabilities.

RADICALS: LEGITIMACY and LEGALITY

We have always maintained that we are a radical movement in content and in spirit. Radicalness, however, does not only relate to the spirit of an organization but more to an organization’s capacity to tie concrete objectives to daily routine. We do not believe that radicalness exists merely to wreck the concepts of legality. And we hold this to be true in spite of our vigil at the Palladian Basilica, the severing of the new U.S. base’s fiber optic cables, cutting holes in the base’s perimeter fence, the incursion onto the airfield at Dal Molin, and the blocking of trucks heading towards base’s construction site. These, and any other future actions we might take, define our radicalness as "whatever it takes to communicate that the struggle by the city of Vicenza against the building of an unwanted military base remains an on-going event." In addition, we do not want to confine our concept of radicalness to any one form, or any one act, of protest or civil disobedience. We are not interested in headlines or making the evening news on television. We want our radicalness to promote the strength of our position and increase our capacity to develop the dynamics that will put an end to those plans that seek the construction of the unwanted military base of a foreign power within the city limits of a famous Italian city. When the Italian government calls on us to respect the legalities of the situation, the agreements made and the contracts written between the then existing governments of the United States and Italy, it does so totally ignoring the more basic legality involving the common good of the citizens of Vicenza. We see the government’s attitude towards us as nothing more or less than an attempt to quash legitimate protest. From the very outset, we never hesitated to challenge "legitimacy" if it violated a higher level of legality. And so we find ourselves obstructing a construction project that violates the desires of a bona fide population. The illegitimacy of the situation falls on the shoulders of those who would deny the citizens of Vicenza control over their homeland, their futures and their peace of mind. Our movement has consistently underscored our close relationship with the city of Vicenza. Even as we note with gratitude the unwavering and much needed support that has come to us from every part of Italy, we remain focused on the realization that our battle against the construction of the U.S. base can only be won by a massive and continuous involvement on the part of the citizens of Vicenza who apparently agree.

VICENZA, A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE.

The work that we have been doing and the battle that we have been fighting have taught us a few things. As there was no earlier movement that we could copy, or prescribed schemes of protest that we might adopt, we were forced to educate ourselves in the matter of standing up to unlawful authority. The protest movement known as "No Tav Valsusini" against the new high-speed train network and associated tunnels did inspire us with their determination and their passion and they were, for us, an example and a definite point of reference. But we realized that they were succeeding because they were operating on their own territory and within their own environment. That taught us that our own campaign was unique because it too had its own territory and its own environment. These conditions will always frustrate attempts to reshape, or duplicate, successful campaigns of protest. Those attempts are usually promoted by outside forces that remain indifferent to local realities, in our case, Vicenza. We understand this and for that reason we appeal for respect and understanding concerning the nature of our movement. Our strength comes from the fact that we are organized to operate in Vicenza! We have come to understand this because we have witnessed, and worked with, so many local initiatives that have faced up to pernicious and outside forces that attempt to degrade the common welfare of Vicenza. And that has taught us how to relate to local initiatives. Local initiatives need to develop naturally within their own context, with their own methodologies, and, above all, with their own people who have a feeling for what they are doing and hold on to the passion required to fight and to continue fighting. Lately we have had to push aside attempts to falsely label us as a political organization. To make that mistake people have to be blind to the realities of Vicenza. But we are not interested in responding to the various and pointless arguments that are presented to us. Words in such cases are unnecessary. All it takes is one look at a photograph taken of any one of our recent actions to stop any attempt to label us, or to suggest an idea that simply won’t fit into what we are doing or make sense on the path we have taken. Our situation is actually quite simple. All we need is the support and participation of people who oppose war and who seek to protect the common good. We hope to be a bridge between those two states of mind which many believe to be vastly separated but which are, actually, totally related and complimentary. With that idea guiding us, we insist on sticking to the path we have chosen for ourselves. It is a path where there is no room for theoretical discussions and where, instead, there is plenty of room for participation.

THE ROAD AHEAD

If we look behind us we’ll see many months of mobilization for a specific purpose. That mobilization has attained certain victories and has also known bitter disappointment; so much solidarity and a bond that grows ever stronger. Over time we have become a community, so much so that we are often referred to as "the other muncipality." We’ve done all this not only to stand against the governing body of Vicenza, which has sold out our city, but above all because we feel something else, something new and innovative.

We struggle against the building of a new U.S. base at Dal Molin because we reject war and oppose the devastation of the local environment that the completion of the project would bring about, but also because these months have taught us to share a different idea of municipal life which is not based on economic interests and profits but rather on the needs of the residents and their quality of life, where the life of each one of us is not a simple existence, but a participation. During the months of our mobilization we discovered the unparalleled importance of participating in the processes that lead to and decide municipal policy. We’ve also discovered the importance of common resources and of nature. We have come to realize that a healthy city can’t just be an indiscriminate collection of asphalt and cement. It must have sociality and welfare, balance and respect. Therefore we are "the other city and the other city hall." Our recent activities and development have made us feel that indeed we are outside the limits of the city in as much as we have stepped outside the anonymity of daily city life to dedicate ourselves to a collective aim: the future of our community. That is what binds the rejection of war, the defense of public resources, and the experimentation with new practices of collective participation and the idea that each one of us can construct alternatives to the building of the new base of US war.

We are aware of the limitations of our journey. None of us have pre-packaged solutions to the problems that we run into and will undoubtedly continue to run into. It would be of course easier to seek some shortcut, to find some charismatic leader, and give him or her the job of showing us the way, to construct hierarchies and reproduce old organizational formulas and practices. But we choose, instead, to continue with our practice of experimenting, because our transversality is our wealth, a treasure that we are not hiding away in the bank, that we want to invest in order to attain an objective that is as ambitious as it is realistic: stopping the greatest military power and war-mongering nation on earth from building a military base on land that belongs to us, to put a grain of sand in the workings of the war machine, show that the only way to build peace is opposition to war. That is why we will always defend our autonomy and our authenticity. We do not accept labels or political manipulation. We want to continue to survey the horizon and from time to time to decide collectively which star we should follow. In the course of these years, we have discovered another common resource, in addition to peace, the water, the land, the air, the earth – it is our movement, the women and men, the young and the old, the workers and the unemployed. We want to halt the militarization of our city and to this end we have already dedicated months of our everyday lives, and we will continue to do so because together we have learned to dream.