Statement from Fabrizio Acanfora

Dear comrades,

It is with some satisfaction (and my usual tardiness!) that I can announce that the sentence of the Rome court, handed down on 18th November 2005, regarding the "10 Days Trial" was in my favour. This means that Trenitalia [the Italian national rail company] lost its case to legally enforce the 10-day suspension I received by way of disciplinary measure for having written, in my capacity as elected and mandated union representative, a letter to the daily newspaper "Il Secolo XIX" to protest about the bad service on the railways.

At present I do not know the exact terms of the sentence, and it will take about 20 more days to find out the reason for the court's decision. So my delay in communicating the result was also due to this, and not only to laziness!

I would love to be able to celebrate a victory thanks to the justice of my case (and not just thanks to some legal loophole), because a victory like this could be most useful in the battles that surely lie ahead of us, battles for the defence of our freedom of expression and against repression in the workplace.

The news of the victory in this trial is however good, coming as it does in a difficult period for Italian rail workers. A court victory is by now a rarity. One of the dismissals as a result of the "Report" affair has been confirmed by the court in Genoa, and the outcome of the others is far from certain. Other trials and arbitrations regarding ordinary rail workers and union activists in recent months have all had disastrous outcomes, confirming the fact that you can't normally beat the bosses using their own tools. The repressive machinery is working flat out in support of the policies of liberalization of the railways. This sentence, in fact, seems to go in the opposite direction and I hope that its importance can have more far-reaching effects than just my own case.

I am convinced that a relevant role was played in this trial by the large-scale mobilization that was put into action, by the extraordinary solidarity I received from all over the world through the channels of the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (FdCA). The Committee for Solidarity with Fabrizio Acanfora, set up immediately after the disciplinary measure was taken against me by comrades with whom I shared years of bitter struggles in the railways, was given the opportunity to make use of the website and international relations of the FdCA. The many messages of solidarity which arrived from every continent showed that people are still well capable of showing their indignation and opposing neo-liberalist arrogance. Thanks to this, I never felt alone in this battle. In those hard moments, I could see the strength of the support of comrades, both those well-known to me and those I had never heard of. Our strength, the strength of our politics and our ideas. The strength of anarchist communists throughout the world.

The list of people I should thank is a long one. Apart from those who are particularly close to me, those colleagues who have supported me right from the start of this adventure (colleagues from all over Italy who came to the first hearing of the trial) and of course the FdCA, I should also mention my fine defence lawyer, Vincenzo Giovinazzo, from Alessandria, who beat one of the most "feared" legal firms in the capital; the comrade of the [ferrovierinlotta] discussion list and my French comrades from Alternative Libertaire and SUD Rail who were the first to send me a much-appreciated message of solidarity; the SULT, FLTU-CUB and ORSA trade unions who openly supported me (even though I was at the time an elected union representative for the FILT-CGIL union) and who called a strike and organized other initiatives; the many workers, precarious workers and unemployed workers from all over Italy, Europe and even from South America, the USA and South Africa, who felt it in themselves to express their support for me against freedom-killing measures.

The road is still an uphill road. But we can hold our heads up and go forward.

Anarchist communist greetings,

Fabrizio Acanfora

5/12/05