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NEWS & LETTERS, March-April 2010
Africans revolt in Italy
Seven hundred immigrant workers in Rosarno, Calabria, Italy, turned over vehicles, set trash cans on fire, and attacked parked cars, reacting to "black hunting."
Immigrant workers from North Africa and Maghreb, who come to pick fruit in the region of Sicily dominated by the 'Ndrangheta Mafia group, are continually attacked by racist local people. They live in silos and abandoned factories in substandard conditions without bathrooms or beds.
These African workers, called temporeros, work as day laborers 12 to 14 hours a day for 20 euros (about $27) before paying 5 euros commission to recruiters. They work as if they were slaves for 'Ndrangheta.
Recently a local racist group openly attacked, shot and wounded African immigrants. Others were beaten.
When many of the immigrants went to City Hall to ask for protection, they encountered a lynch mob, which almost hanged some of them.
Roberto Saviano, who has written extensively on the Naples Mafia, argues against treating the immigrant workers as criminals, and adds: "[The riots]... were really a revolt against the 'Ndrangheta...Anyone who seeks to negate or to minimize this motive is not familiar with these places where everything--jobs, wages, housing--is controlled by criminal organizations.... The only ones who've had the courage to rebel against them are the Africans."
Marx said that labor in the white skin can never be free while labor in the Black skin is branded. Those immigrant workers need our support to free us from the chain of capital's domination.
--Manel
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