Return to Forte Prenestino
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2007
1
2
25
Trip End
Sep 05, 2007
Roma,
Italy
Sunday, June 17, 2007
(Rome, Sunday, June 17, 2007)-Sunday afternoon Mark and I took the Eurostar train from Milano to Roma, a 4-1/2 hour trip that cost our sponsors just €51 for each of us. Our man Antoniello picks us up and drives us straight to the S.P.A. (Spazio Pubblico Autogestito) STRIKE in an abandoned bread distribution plant on the via U. Partini, where the Italian social critic Il Duca and I will introduce STRIKE's screening of the David Zeiger film Sir! No Sir! We were slated to be joined by Bill Ayres, the Weather Underground organizer whose memoir Fugitive Days has just been published in Italian translation by COX 18 Books, but his father had just passed away and he wasn't able to leave Chicago to fly to Italy.
Sir! No Sir! Is a document of the anti-war resistance movement within the American military during the War in Vietnam. It presents the movement from its tentative beginnings and follows it through the end of the war in 1975, speaking with many participants and close observers of the GI Anti-War Movement. It was an honor to be asked to address its audience in Roma and I would do it again the following week at a whole different venue. On the way out of the building we saw the STRIKE motto splashed onto the wall:
STRIKE THE WAR
SMASH BUSH
Finally it was time for Mark and me to check in to our little living spaces at Forte Prenestino. Maybe I will figure out how to post some photos to this Travelogue so I can show you what the Forte looks like, because it's very difficult for me to describe. The key point is that it's a former fortress, established circa 1853 and abandoned years ago before the gang of anarchist punks that runs it first occupied the grounds and declared it a Centro Sociale Occupato & Autogestito: An Occupied and Self-Governed Social Center.
When I was here last year the collective was celebrating the 20th anniversary of the day in 1986 that they seized the fort and turned it in to a social center, so they've been at it a long time. Like the COX 18 krewe in Milano, many of the members have outside employment but gather nightly at the Forte to have dinner and a few drinks, maybe watch some movies or dance to records or dig a performance by a local or visiting artist.
There are also a few crude residences on the grounds where the hard-core staff is housed which have been sort of tunneled into the sides of the hills that surround the two parade grounds within the fortress walls, spaced along a circular walkway about two conventional stories above ground level. This is where Mark and I will live for the next two weeks in our cozy little rooms dug into the hillside.
The two military parade grounds-suitable for training and marching army troops in preparation for battle but now utilized as staging areas for major concerts, dance parties, film screenings and disparate cultural events-are separated by a gigantic earthwork mound through the middle of which an elaborate series of tunnels has been constructed with rooms of various sizes staggered on both sides of the mammoth passageways. These rooms include the administrative office, a kitchen and dining area, a bar, a dance/concert space with full sound & lighting, a recording studio, practice rooms, workshops and spaces for other activities.
What a place! They used to house an army here, and stockpile their arms and ammunition, and march through the stone tunnels and around the parade grounds every day. But the anarcho-punks who seized this fortress and the modern-day beatnik hippies who have carried on the work have transformed this ugly military installation into a center of creativity, art and cultural production, self-determination and resistance.
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When I was in Roma a year ago I had the extreme pleasure of visiting the "Punto G" show on Radio Onda Rossa and making a Joint Production with Giovanna Anna which I'd like to present for you here:
http://www.johnsinclairradio.com/audio/jsrshow84.mp3
John Sinclair Radio Show #84
Radio Onde Rossa, Roma
Tuesday, April 25, 2006 @ 2:30-3:45 pm [20-0613]
Ah! To be in Rome on National Liberation Day 2006, celebrating Italy's release from its previous fascist regime 61 years ago and joining Ms. Giovanna on her "Punt G" ("G Spot") radio program on Radio Onde Rossa (Red Wave), the Spazio Sociale (People's Space) that's squatted on the public airwaves for 28 years without the merest shred of a license. G has her colleague Emilia on board to conduct an interview with me, brilliantly translated by Ele; I do a duet performance with Mark Ritsema and a couple of poems over music by John Coltrane; and G plays records by Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, Daronda, Jeanne Lee, and the MC5.
Playlist #84
[01] Opening Music: Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln: Freedom Day
[02] Comments by Giovanna
[03] Daronda: Legs (Part 1)
[04] Comments by Giovanna
[05] Daronda: Didn't I
[06] Jeanne Lee: I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
[07] Comments by Giovanna and John Sinclair Intro
[08] John Sinclair & Mark Ritsema: everything happens to me
[09] Emilia Interviews John Sinclair, Translated by Ele (Part 1)
[10] MC5: Kick Out the Jams
[11] Emilia Interviews John Sinclair, Translated by Ele (Part 2)
[12] John Coltrane: Resolution / John Sinclair 'Live': Spiritual > Consequences
[13] Comments by Giovanna & John Sinclair
[14] Closing Music: John Coltrane: Pursuance with Giovanna Outro
A Joint Production
Hosted by Giovanna for "G Spot," Radio Onde Rossa, Roma, Italy
& John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Produced & Engineered by Giovanna
Interviewer: Emilia, Translated by Ele
Mastered & posted by Henk Botwinik
Executive Producer: John Sinclair
Special thanks to Antonio & all the people at Radio Onde Rossa
Sponsored by c.s.o.a. Forte Prenestino, Roma & The Dolphins, Amsterdam
©(P) 2006, 2007 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Podcast by www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com @ May 1, 2006
-Detroit
July 28, 2007
