Instrumentos de cobertura y estructura de mercados de largo plazo

Void:Italy was in turmoil in the months immediately after the G8 summit. A lot of people got involved in politics and active in self-managed social centers. What that meant for A/I was an increased number of users. But for our part we continued on as before – discussing issues on the collective’s mailing list and tinkering with the servers.

During these months A/I focused on optimizing its services and resources. In particular the security of the server became a more urgent topic of discussion. The situation after Genoa 2001 was marked by ominous episodes.

Void:The first security issues arose as soon as we presented the project to the public at the Hackmeeting. That’s when we did a first redesign of the server box, modifying its initial configuration. After Genoa in 2001, the server was transformed from being a space for our experimentation as hackers into a serious resource.

However, the shift that caused A/I’s activity to cease to be perceived as harmless was not immediate, and the response of the authorities to the various forms of media activism was not uniform.

Cojote:The first big demonstration after Genoa was the Perugia-Assisi Peace March,122_which

was understandably well attended that year. I drove there in a rented van which we had dec- orated with Indymedia’s black flags. We went there to distribute the first VHS tapes of footage from the anti-G8 protests, which had been edited and supplemented with updated material.

After the Peace March, the guys parked their camper van in a square in Perugia for two days, setting up a makeshift info-point. Caught unawares, the local authorities supported the initiative and granted it permission.

122 Perugia-Assisi Peace March: Annual peace march held in the home city of Saint Francis, who also happens to be the patron saint of Italy.

Cojote:We had a strange appeal. When a connection was set up between Blicero in Palestine and one of the main squares in Florence, Piazza della Signoria, technicians working for the city offered us the infrastructure, provided a link for the stream and allowed us to erect an antenna. On that occasion we had set up our info-point in the middle of the square without any authorization, but no one tried to kick us out. Today this would be unthinkable. And yet there we were, black-clad… and with attitudes that were anything but social-democratic.

In the collective’s eyes, the tolerance shown by the various city officers towards these initiatives was explicable by the fact that they could not immediately be pigeon-holed. They were a nov- elty and behaved in ways other than usually expected of the opposition. Long accustomed to a traditional style of political antagonism – and its accompanying grammar of actions, language and demands – local politicians found nothing objectionable about these young ‘reporters’.

Cojote:Media activists tried to be impartial figures. We stood next to journalists and our rela- tionship with authorities was not tainted by the burden of history. It was easy to understand which side we were on, so much so that the help we received on such occasions usually came from insiders, who as individuals decided to give us a hand. But the problem which weighed upon us was the risk of the seizure of our materials by the police, an issue we would have to face shortly after Genoa.

Indeed they did not have to wait long. In February 2002 the police searched a series of spac- es designated as Indymedia’s ‘headquarters’ and seized a range of material: VHS cassettes, computers, and archives related to the G8 in Genoa. In fact, Indymedia never had a head- quarters, being an independent online network based on public mailing lists. The physical places targeted in these searches were the office of the Cobas in Taranto (a rank-and-file trades union), the social centers Gabrio in Turin and TPO in Bologna, and the Cecco Rivolta squat in Florence.

In light of these events, it was time for the collective to reflect on what had happened.

Cojote:After the Indymedia seizures, we began to try and make the data more secure. Back then we were too paranoid, much more than now. That’s why A/I is a closed collective and accepts new members only by ‘co-optation’ – because in that period we were afraid of being infiltrated.

There are multiple reasons behind this co-optation mechanism, not least the fact that A/I handles sensitive data for half the political movement in Italy. And then there is also the need to keep the resources functioning even in circumstances where there may be internal quarrels.

Ale:A/I felt the need to organize itself in such a way as to allow trust to be totally transitive,

because we are responsible for others’ mailboxes, for their data. That’s why it’s always been a closed collective. A/I survives and evolves by turning to (or ‘co-opting’) individuals who feel they have the right skills and motivations. In practice, this means that new members are sought and found within those milieus where A/I is already present. These are people who from time to time have had both the will and strength to contribute to the community through this specific project. So what we call ‘co-optation’ is an informal mechanism that evolves naturally from the shape of our political activity.

With time, the closed nature of A/I turned out to be a strategic advantage for the survival of the project.

Void:After Genoa 2001, Autistici remained fairly united, while we watched other projects run into problems. This was also because while we do our own thing in our own separate collectives, within A/I there is a different and more personal type of commitment.

Co-optation was not the collective’s only inbuilt defense mechanism: there was also a sort of ‘compartmentalization’ born of a shared determination to build something that can endure.

Blicero:If A/I as a group do not have a shared feeling with regard to a specific question then this matter is automatically excluded from the collective’s bailiwick, because the project is more important than any single issue. Within the collective there are people with different political ideas, but that’s less important than A/I so an effort is made. However this effort is not made equally by all, the result is sometimes that the most uncompromising positions win out, which can result in sacrificing innovation – and the experimental urge – but this happens so that the collective protects itself.

Things were constantly changing – which makes them a bit jumbled – not only regarding the relationship with the authorities, but also within the movement, which tried to re-organize after the Genoese massacre. While many people dropped out of political activism, those who remained felt an obligation to keep things functioning. Tensions arising in the relationships between political organizations, whether fertile or sterile in effect, made A/I’s existence com- plex at a local level. For example, Inventati (the Florentine branch of A/I), with its insistence on independence and taking a particular approach to communications work, found itself in a position that was both odd and difficult to handle.

Cojote:The tolerance shown occasionally by the authorities towards us led to conflicts with the movement, which viewed it as evidence of incoherence on our part. But we never regarded any authority as ‘better’ because they let us set up an aerial rather than driving us off.

As we have seen, older activists always looked at counter-information – what we now call media activism – with some mistrust, and Inventati found a true community of support only among the young libertarians of the Cecco Rivolta squat. And even then it was not without difficulties.

Cojote:We were clearly doing something delicate. In a way we were exposed, the authorities could pick us out easily, and in Florence we were accused or charged with all sorts of things – including unauthorized possession of explosives. On the other hand, we were in direct contact with different parts of the local movement who often refused to speak to one another. In the end they had to trust us, but we also had to be very careful when talking to them.

It is undeniable that Indymedia managed to do things that a few years before would have been unthinkable. Reports were produced on a wide range of locations and situations – local, national, or international – that the movement had always wanted to make widely known beyond the domain of the alternative media.

Caparossa: In 2002 there was the Solidarity Caravan in Palestine. Radio OndaRossa and Indymedia organized live broadcasts from over there. Press agencies like Adnkronos stole our reports without quoting the source because they had no journalists willing to risk being shot by Israeli troops in the media center in Jenin. It’s not that we were cool: we were just

there. Because we could be there. Because we had the relationships, the contacts. Because we had created a universe of physical and digital communication that enabled us to be on the spot in those years.

Once again everything is done with affordable equipment: a video camera costing a few hundred euro, a cheap stills camera, a laptop, and a shaky connection.

Caparossa:The tools were just means to an end, they were not our main focus. Going to Jenin to create a media center was not something for nerds: it was a political action in the most positive and beautiful sense, because we were giving those people the possibility of commu- nicating with the rest of the world – a possibility which otherwise they never would have had.