Who is the black bloc? Where is the black bloc?

On the day after the Rome protests, this was the question in every newspaper, and it deserves an answer: Do you want to see the faces behind the scarves, helmets and balaclavas?

They are the same faces that pay you rent for derelict houses; the faces you look at when asking them to work contracts of 500 euros a month with the chance of employment after one month of trial and a switch to full-time for 800 euros. They are the faces that submit dissertation proposals and who you force to mention your boring texts; the faces of the kids from out of town that you slap when you catch them with a bit of smoke.

They are the ones who cook your tender sirloin at the fancy chic eatery, and do it for 50 euros a night, undeclared; they make your cappuccino with froth. They answer your phone saying; "892424; how can I help?", and buy vegetables at Lidl because the supermarkets are too expensive. They entertain you on your 450-euro package holiday, and set up the market stall where you buy your fresh fruit.

They are the ones whose life-blood is being sapped by precariousness, whose lives are shit, and they are tired of putting up with it.

We belong to a generation, who for one day, stopped accumulating cirrhosis from the neurosis of a life-long training in precariousness; we supported the revolt. We are the future you should listen to: the only healthy part of a country plagued with metastases. The event of 14 December 2010 were epochal in their nature: when an armed police van caught fire the whole of Piazza del Popolo exploded in a liberating roar. That roar is our existence, the existence of those who believe that such a government could not sustain itself on four (or rather three) miserable people - and finally many of us, thousands of us, managed to scream: 'Together we inspire fear!' A roar of joy and anger exploded on the right side, while the wrong side was shut inside parliament.

The Black Bloc strikes again. Careful: rumour has is you might meet them at the lecture, in the library, by the bar's coffee machines, in the pub, by the beach, or even in the tram.

Declaration by the Autonomous University Collective, Torino. Translated by Federico Campagna.