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RiMaflow will live!!

Wednesday 5 September 2018

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The RiMaflow cooperative has been forced to close.

Its chairman has been accused with outrageous and unfounded charges.

This won’t cancel our cooperative’s social project.

We want Massimo Lettieri to be freed immediately!!

They have tried to block, with all available instruments, the work of our mutualistic and cooperative project, RiMaflow, the worker-recovered factory in Trezzano sul Naviglio [Milan]. RiMaflow emerged almost six years ago from a formerly abandoned multinational business which had dismissed 330 people. Since then, the RiMaflow cooperative has received strength to resist and has become one of the most significant experiences of workers’ self-managed factories. Since opening our cooperative we have managed to survive and thrive through the strength of community solidarity, enabling us to create a positive ecological footprint, approximately 120 new jobs without any external help, take a strong stance against organized crime - in which many companies and institutions in the southwestern region of Milan are involved - and to facilitate a people’s network of social economy we call “Fuorimercato” (Out Of the Market).

A very small part of RiMaflow’s business (the recovery of raw materials from wall paper, representing only 3.6% of RiMaflow’s budget, which actually results in an economic loss for us, serving rather as a training investment) has very recently been used to present RiMaflow as part of a criminal association working with the illegal processing of waste. This is indeed the most paradoxical and outrages charge that could be leveled against our cooperative!!! Involvement in criminal activities by the companies RiMaflow has relied on for machinery and material for production does not mean in any way the participation of our cooperative and its chairman, Massimo Lettieri, in such shameful activities. And we can and will prove this!!!

Unfortunately, in the meantime, the seizure of our cooperative’s fixed and intangible assets, of our bank accounts, and of our IT and administra¬tive systems, has begun to violently erase all of RiMaflow’s regular and operational activities, preventing us from paying salaries, contributions, invoices, and tax obligations (VAT and other taxes). This will, no doubt, dramatically burden our cooperative’s budget over time. This is intolerable and unfair!!!

This moment for us is extremely serious. We ask the international community to join us in an extraordinary campaign of resistance and solidarity. We ask organizations and individuals in solidarity with us to mobilize in any way possible: It is time to show, once again, which side we are on!!!

Brazil’s Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ and Peasants’ Movement, MST) (see below) and the International Workers’ Economy Network have already shown solidarity with us. Please join them in sending an email of support with your name, position, affiliation/organization, city, and country to centrodoc@gmail.com and CC info@rimaflow.it

Trezzano sul Naviglio, 1 August 2018

Cooperativa RiMaflow

Associazione Occupy Maflow

Fuorimercato, autogestione in movimento [1]

APPEAL

RIMAFLOW WILL LIVE!!!

RiMaflow, through its different work activities (the Cooperative and craftshops), its cultural activities and the promotion of a network of social and people’s economy called “Fuorimercato”, has contributed to give a more supportive and human face to the suburbs and to the territory of the Southwestern area of Milan , becoming an important point of reference also on an international level for the redemption of the weakest social sectors.

The investigation in which RiMaflow has been involved with the charge of criminal association is paradoxical because of the deep ethical and social values showed by its workers.

The criminal investigation cannot erase the whole community of RiMaflow: the Cooperative must return to live and its legal representative must immediately return to freedom!!

We express our greatest solidarity with RiMaflow, which must also be concretely translated into immediate financial support for legal expenses and to deal with the seizure of assets, starting with its current accounts; these expenses will amount to tens of thousands of euros over time!!

Sustainable Fundraising initiatives are needed to ensure:

DONATIONS

SOLIDARITY LOANS (with a minimum maturity of 6 months – one year)

to be paid to:

Ass. Fuorimercato

Banca Credito Cooperativo

IBAN: IT79 D083 8633 9100 00000470387

Bic/Swift: ICRAITRRAQ0

specifying “donation” or “loan for ... months / years”.

P.S.

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Footnotes

[1For more information on our cooperative and our solidarity economy initiatives, please see: www.rimaflow.it www.fuorimercato.com.