The IWW’s sister union in Italy, USI (Unione Sindacale Italiana), has been assisting with relief projects following destructive earthquakes in August and again in October of last year. Four earthquakes struck the mountainous spine of Italy northeast of Rome with magnitudes 5.5 to 6.6. Over 300 were killed, many more were injured, and villages and small towns were devastated. Many refugees are still living in tent cities; some of the ancient towns may never be rebuilt, according to the government.

USI locals in Modena, Parma, Rome, and Macerata immediately began to collect money and loaded vans with food and clothing to take into Arquata del Tronto and the mountain hamlet of Illica, medieval towns largely reduced to rubble by August’s magnitude 6.2 temblor. Over time, the entire union participated. After the first earthquake, building materials were collected to construct a self-managed refugee village, but this project had to be halted following the three quakes in October.

USI sources told the Industrial Worker that some union members lost their homes in the earthquakes, and others have lost theirs following the regional economic collapse, due to destruction and depopulation. The present phase of relief focuses on building shelters for residents who have farm animals and are unwilling to leave the area. Food, gas, and phone cards are still being brought in by our USI comrades, but with the onset of winter more people have left the devastated area. The union is collaborating with Genuino Clandestino, an association of farmers and self-sufficiency activists.

USI is building on experience gained in 2009 and again in 2012, when they assisted with relief following earthquakes that did horrible damage in L’Aquila and Emilia.

USI is the Italian affiliate of the anarcho-syndicalist AIT, a revolutionary union confederation with members around the world. USI reports it has around 800 members. It is chiefly organized in the health, education, and civil service industries, as well as some cooperatives. There are a number of active sections in Emilia Romagna (north-central Italy) and the adjacent regions of Lombardy and Tuscany. Smaller groups are scattered around the country.

USI locals are equipping to help themselves and others when disasters strike. They are collecting tents, supplies for field kitchens, and a van to deliver material aid. They have used concerts and other events to raise emergency funds. At their last business meeting, the San Francisco Bay Area GMB voted to approve sending USI $500 as a sign of solidarity and for USI’s earthquake war chest. Send email to [email protected] for how to provide assistance to USI.

The election of Donald Trump was a shock for me. I had visions of state power accelerating its assault against immigrants, of police violence escalating, and of anemboldened far right attacking people onthe streets.

I have been organizing with the IWW for some time. I was drawn to the union because of its long history and its approach to class struggle. The militant labor-based radicalism appealed to me. I liked that the union was nonsectarian,and it had a historic affinity with anti-authoritarianism, anti-oppression, direct action, and direct democracy. I also felt that the left needed structured, dues-and membership-based organizations in order to develop and maintain its members’ skills and build power from one fight tothe next.

After the election I wanted to prepare for a right-wing onslaught. I’d been thinking about the need for community defense-based organizations for a while, but suddenly it seemed urgent. I wanted to work towards building a group that could help our region be prepared for what I feared was coming. I wanted that group to be situated within the IWW to build on the strengths that drew me to the union. Fortunately, the model to do that already existed. At convention in 2016 I had been impressed with the report of the General Defense Committee (GDC). Fellow workers, starting in the Twin Cities, had been building the sort of organization I wanted to see in the Pacific Northwest: A diverse group of people—members of the Incarcerated Workers’ Organizing Committee, the African People’s Caucus, and veterans of Anti-Racist Action—was taking the IWW’s working-class organizing outside the shop. People of color and white radicals were coming together in one group, united by common politics. They were taking a holistic approach to resisting the spectrum of oppression that the owning class brings to bear on the rest of us, not only with anti-fascist and anti-police violence organizing, but also with harm reduction-based drug-user support and sexual violence-survivor solidarity. They were organized, they were growing rapidly, and they were doing amazing work.

I came to appreciate what the GDC was doing more over time. The barrier that confronts the working class isn’t simply capitalism; it is a white-supremacist, imperialist, hetero-normative, patriarchal capitalism. It confronts us in the work- place, but also on the streets of our towns and cities, in prisons, and in cultural and political institutions. The working class isn’t a unitary identity: It is divided by fissures that the ruling class has always used to divide us. The IWW has always understood this, shown by the union’s historic efforts to organize the working class and its insistence that this include women, people of color, immigrants, and all other workers together right from the outset.

We can’t stand aside in the face of the worst attacks on the most vulnerable members of the working class because they are perpetrated on the streets or in bars and alleys instead of on the job. For an organization as heterogeneous as the IWW to have credibility among all working people, we have to be involved in struggles that inordinately impact the most marginalized workers. If we show up for these fights, we earn respect and our strengths are given an opportunity to shine. It allows us to highlight how far-right agendas are dangerous and show that divisive attacks on working people can lead to a common catastrophe that only a united front across the working class can counter.

Assaults on working people are already escalating. In Olympia, Washington, where I live, we recently have seen Nazi skinhead organizing, vicious attacks on trans people, a racially motivated knife attack against an interracial couple, an attempt to runover two black youths, the shooting of two young black men by police over an attempt to steal a 12-pack of beer, and multiple demonstrations organized by the far right and attended by right-wing militia members, white supremacists, and bikers. On Inauguration Day in nearby Seattle, we saw the shooting of an IWW and GDC member by a Trump supporter. We can’t depend on the police or the legal system to defend us; the state is not neutral. The only sane response is to organize for the defense of the working class.

The GDC approach to the rising tide of right-wing violence and fascism has been mass-oriented anti-fascism. This doesn’t mean dressing like a ninja and punching Nazis (though most of us in the GDC appreciate and approve of a good Nazi-punching). The GDC as an organization doesn’t take that approach. We  also think there are limits to what can be achieved by an elite vanguard carrying out technical operations against their counterparts on the other side. Those fights are often vital, but we believe that major victories depend on working people finding their own power en masse and beginning to build a new world in the shell of the old. We organize, we work in solidarity with the goals of oppressed people, we build capacity to help provide security for targeted communities, we gather intelligence, and we work to share the skills and lessons we have learned widely.

What I would most like to see my fellow workers take away is the value of the work the GDC is doing for the working class and the union. I encourage you strongly to support the GDC. Become a member. Form a local, if you don’t already have one where you are. Then organize and fight back!