FROM DISSENT TO RESISTANCE: EUROPEAN WORKERS BLOCK BASES AND "DEATH TRAINS"
By John Catalinotto
Feb 27, 2003--Railroad workers and anti-globalization "disobeddienti" have joined together in northern Italy to block the moving of U.S. tanks and trucks to be used against Iraq.
On Feb. 21 thousands of railroad workers who were demonstrating in Padova against layoffs also raised anti-war slogans. Word arrived that a train loaded with military materiel was traveling from nearby Camp Ederle, the site of weekly protests, to Camp Darby, near Pisa. Rail road workers had blocked its path near the town of Monselice.
By the time national police removed those blocking the train, word had also reached the anti-globalization movement. Further down the line near Padova, other groups blocked the tracks. They set off flares to stop the train for about two hours.
Meanwhile, more demonstrators were gathering further south, threatening to camp out on the railroad tracks to stop the "death train." Anti- globalization organizers said people were ready to struggle in Ferrara, Bologna and even in Tuscany further south.
Confronted by the workers, executives admitted this train was only the first of at least 26 that would be carrying "tactical arms" to Turkey. The anti-war movement in Italy says Premier Silvio Berlusconi's turning over Italy's infrastructure to the U.S. war machine is a crime and must be stopped.
Union workers and anti-war activists notified the railroad bosses that their actions were only the first in a series to "stop the global war." Roberto Martelli, the railway union secretary general in Tuscany, said: "The traditions of the railroad workers and their union are based on the principle of peace. Our members have no intentions to offer their services to the war."
Dock workers at Livorno are also refusing to unload military transport ships.
INSPECTING FRANKFORT'S AIRPORT
On Feb. 22 at the military section of the Rhine-Main airport in Germany, demonstrators dressed as weapons inspectors and labeled "Hans Blix" and "Mohamed El Baradei" led 3,000 others trying to get through police and guards to look for U.S. weapons of mass destruction. Militant demonstrators got through to the tarmac, where they blockaded the base for three hours.
In Britain on Feb. 20, four anti-war activists used their bodies to block the runway of the Brize Norton base, from which British troops are being flown to the Persian Gulf.
On Feb. 23, some 450 people took part in a march on the Fairford base of Britain's Royal Air Force. A dozen breached the main gate before they were apprehended and arrested. Fairford was a point of departure for U.S. B-52 bombers during the 1991 Gulf war and 1999 assault on Yugoslavia.
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