Version imprimableOn Thursday, 26 July, we received really bad and troubling news from Italy: Massimo Lettieri, president of the RiMaflow cooperative, the self-managed occupied factory in Trezzano sul Naviglio, near Milano, has been arrested.
He has been wrongly implicated, along with RiMaflow, in a police investigation on illegal trafficking of waste.
This is an absurd charge, since RiMaflow has worked from the beginning with ecological projects, proposing recycling projects for waste materials. In fact the cooperative is also in a regularization process with the local authorities. The presumed connection between Ri-Maflow and criminal organisations is even more absurd if we think about the efforts Ri-Maflow has made against workers’ exploitation and Mafia issues in the city and the suburbs of Milan.
In the meanwhile the appropriation of part of the factory facilities has been decreed by the judge, and money intended to be used for workers’ wage also seized.
Massimo Lettieri came to a youth camp in Greece several years ago to speak about workers’ self-management, workers’ self-organisation and workers’ economy.
The contribution of such examples and experiences has been fundamental in the youth camp’s educational activities and also for many political organisation around the world.
That’s why we consider urgent to show all the possible solidarity to those who have shown us what workers solidarity can do. To show our solidarity to Ri-Maflow, to Ri-Maflow cooperative workers and to Massimo himself.
From the 35th International Revolutionary Youth Camp we demand the liberation of Massimo Lettieri and an immediate halt to the criminalisation of Ri-Maflow. We also call for international solidarity.
The Ri-Maflow struggle is our struggle.
Let’s defend workers’ self-management and workers’ self-organisation!
Free Massimo!
28 July 2018
