Marco Armiero
Only twenty years ago no one would have bet on it. It all seemed compromised, lost forever.
We live in a completely fossil fuel dependent society, where governments were at the service of capital. I remember when the national-racist front seemed to take over every country in the world. From Brazil to Italy, a new right was mounting with simple slogans that pitted the poor against the poorest, fomenting fears and prejudices. Yet the exaggerated. They exaggerated when in December 2025 they let 60 people die at sea, refusing to open ports and leaving them at the mercy of one of the increasingly frequent Mediterranean storms. Carlos and Sara were real heroes. They were video reporters with the pirate channel of the resistance and remained to film and broadcast throughout the shipwreck, until they too went off into the waves. The fact that the regime channel broadcast instead the usual Christmas message of the ministers of the national security and Italian prosperity from a well-known tourist location was the straw which broke the camel’s back.
Many parishes were closed after the decision of the revolutionary Pope to leave society to itself by refusing to offer the sacraments to those who did not deserve them. We of the political opposition had been imprisoned at first but then they understood that it was easier to kill us slowly, by isolating us, making impossible to access Internet, firing us, spreading news false about us. Like when they spread the rumor that we had robbed the van with the money for the “Card to buy Italian” destined for the super poor Italians. They said that we had distributed the money to migrants – all false, obviously, but it was easy to convince the majority of people, after all they owned all the media of communication.
But something started to change. For instance, on September 2028 there was the mysterious song. No one knew from where it was coming from, who had written it, but it began to spread. The rebel priests, the comrades whistled it, the migrants in the camps of self-separation (so they had called that sort of concentration camps in which migrants were locked up). The song became a way to recognize other comrades in the crowed. When the coalition for humanity – which finally brought together all those who opposed the government – proclaimed a general strike, the Minister of Security and that of the Love for the nation sent tanks into the streets, but they found no one. Instead, from every balcony, window, house and church the sound of the opposition song was heard. But you know the story. The repression was very severe. But at that point a community was born. We chose the exodus at the beginning. In the abandoned villages of the Apennines, often on church lands, we created the free republics of humanity. The government left us alone, depicting us as the usual group of radical chic (this is how the intellectuals were called at that time). It was tough, but then people started to come and they found that in the free republics people had a better life. The consumer strike that began in March 2030 was the earthquake. The regime could not believe that many refused to buy.
They tried it all: half price for whites, a free product for those who had already owned the same product; special prices were offered to those who were members of the Party of Real Italians. Nothing. The strike held. We learned to live with less while the Robin Hood brigades for social justice stole from the super rich and distributed to everyone.
Climate change was felt strongly in cities. Only the super-rich closed in neighborhoods in the red areas – those where you could not enter without the VIP ID – resisted protected by air conditioners, heating, running water, food genetically modified. But when we stopped working for them, the system collapsed. The repression was very hard. I remember the massacre of February 2037, when the private police of the red area 134 (an urban agglomeration between Milan and Bergamo) began firing on workers who refused to work.
Today it is 10 years since the revolution. We haven’t solved everything. Climate change that centuries of savage capitalism has left us is not easily resolved. But we are on the right track. The redistribution of wealth has abolished waste and poverty.
The new research system, with collectives of researchers and communities (following the example of our beloved Zapatista brothers and sisters who paved the way for us long ago), is allowing to develop new solutions. The model of free republics has allowed to work on autonomy without ever falling into the trap of closure.
For some, even nature had participated in the revolution, as when he had made it rain on the free republics, leaving the red areas dry. For others, god he had made his voice heard, when for example the inhabitants of many red areas they decided to bring food and drink to the caravan of 3000 migrants that was going up there peninsula. For those like me, however, it had happened that in the end many years of political work had borne their fruits.
The truth is that ours is a beautiful revolution because we were all part of it, because after years of divisions and infighting, we had found the reasons for fighting together.
Father Paolo, the Robin Hood brigades, the clandestine network for ecosocialism, the brigades against the patriarchate, the Afro-European liberation army, and maybe even a god and nature.
Perhaps you would like to ask me: how did you do it? How did you get together? How
was the revolution? And what sources of energy is your society based on? And what happened to the others, to the rich? Well, someone just asked me to send you a postcard from the future, not an instruction manual. Of course, if I had told you it was all a wreck, that I am writing to you from a favela without drinking water or electricity, that slavery is reborn and the rich won, you wouldn’t have asked me the same question. Because in that case it would have been
easy to understand how it went. Obviously in that case we would have left that all continued as usual. Well the answer is all here: we have not left that things continued as usual. Revolt, sabotage, resist, help, withdraw and occupy, remain human. A book that the regime banned many years ago said: a revolution will save us. How to do it, no one can explain it to you with a postcard from the future. Why, Because the trick is to take it back, the future.
Best wishes,
Marco, January 1, 2048.