Saturday 25th – Sunday 26th – June
2005
Dionysus is back in town
By Enrico Fletzer
(with the proof reading contribution of Melektro) - 28 June
2005
Bologna, Italy -- The longest, the
biggest, the strongest, the loudest and craziest
antiprohibitionist street party demonstration of the world took
place at the end of June under the motto ‘fasten your belly and
grow your head’ in Bologna, a wealthy town in Northern Italy.
The sound of over thirty music trucks coming
from Italy, France and Holland shook Bologna at 400.000 watts. At
the beginning of the gathering the city was hit by a violent rain
storm that refreshed everybody and made it possible to overcome
the terrible heat of the last few days and to enjoy a very
pleasant night during the first Saturday of summer in the
beautiful Margherita Park where Californian turtles were swimming
in the lake following the rhythm of reggae, techno and psytrance
music that was then taken on the route around the city ring
and that ended up 24 hours later in the rather sunny North Park
below the highway.
This time the inner city
walls were not supposed to be trespassed just as the red zone of a
G8 meeting. The antiprohibitionist street rave has always been a
political demonstration and a parting gathering but it has been
ticking during the whole year in Bologna as a time bomb against
prohibition and the new mayor Mr Sergio Cofferati, the former
chief of the Italian CGIL trade union, nicknamed ‘the Chinese’ for
his ruthless personality that wants to play as the italian Tony
Blair on other people’s morals in order to curb his possible
critics. The demonstration, that was attended by over 100.000
people, was supported by a large area of different individuals and
groups that are operating under the acronym of m.d.m.a - mass
movement against prohibition - a coalition made up of doctors,
social workers and consumers of cannabis and soft drugs.
Everything during the parade was extremely well
organized with water and toilet supply, health care units,
psychologists and surgeons, drug help and testing included. The
local police behaved in a quite responsible way. It has been a
long march of about 7 miles with a length of about 1 mile. The
weather conditions with about 38 degrees Celsius got better after
the rain storm and for this reason no big problem is reported.
The Chinese had reluctantly accepted the
decision of the police to allow the demonstration. After the
attacks of the small Communist Party and of the masses of bar
tenders that were made illegal overnight, the Greens are very
angry at him, like the powerful gay community that could not
celebrate the ‘Italian Miss Alternative’ benefit party and that
were among the best truck organizers of the 2005 Street Parade.
The next event, the decennial appearance of the tokers’people is
already scheduled for Saturday 26th of June 2006 with a town
meeting that will possibly invite some municipalities like
Maastricht in the Netherlands and Vancouver in Canada to discuss
and apply a distribution model for cannabis in Europe and Canada.
The antiprohibitionist rave of Bologna is and
has always been quite different from the traditional political
demonstrations of the new global movements. The organizers of the
demonstration act under the label of Livello 57, a group of former
squatters that got their own place from a previous Bologna’s
municipal administration at the former Repair Hall of the Central
Railways Station. Now the levellers have also free access to a new
place in the city's outskirts where the louder concerts and
parties are hosted. But there is no good transportation system and
so everything tends to be pretty controversial in the industrial
area where this new concert hall is located.
Curiously enough the legalization process occurred
during the right wing coalition that few years ago had conquered
the ‘red town’ ; last year the Chinese defeated Mr Guazzaloca, a
friendly looking butcher who had previously leaded the local
government. Mister Guazza was successful into keeping the
influence of the local neofascists quite low profile under his
administration, he legalized most of the youth centres like the
Theater, Link and Livello 57 and did actually not care about other
things but playing cards in the pubs. 'Guazza' also means mud in
Italian and some people might be right that he has been a
fantastic laissez-faire politician.
At the
end there was a movement to go over the mud and to make of Bologna
something similar to Amsterdam. There was a feeling of few
alternative people for this man. Cofferati noticed that even some
people in his municipal government would prefer to have the
looser. As the former chief of the CGIL trade union he is used at
having things thrown at him during general strikes. With the new
global movement he tried to be nicer but he’s always been terribly
uptight at the point that was noticed wearing a row tie at a huge
workers demonstration in Andalusia, the hottest region of Spain
that is located in front of Africa and where people tend to go to
work at 4pm and to sleep all night.
In the
meanwhile Mr Cofferati did everything he possibly could to annoy
the night people that have made of Emilia-Romagna the District of
Pleasure and that is known for its pleasant beach life since the
time of Federico Fellini.
Cofferati, that is
now depicted as a beer conservative man, few months ago forbade
the selling of light alcohol drinks in the downtown area after 9
pm. As a matter of fact he is encouraging hash and marijuana that
are easier to conceal and that are much healthier than alcohol.
The question of public disorder is tackled in totally irrational
ways and so the ‘degradation’ of the area has become a very
recurring argument in the political quarrels.
The illegal cannabis market
Italy has lately experienced a rocketing of
marijuana produced in Switzerland and of bad quality from Albania,
but standard grass is normally better than the average Moroccan
hash that is available on the streets by immigrant dealers that
are very often caught and sent to Italian
deportation centers.
There has also been a
rise in the availability and consumption of cocaine and XTC. This
new situation has been the output for a Copernican revolution in
the perception of harm reduction in the youth scene that decided
to start to utilize quick tests for detecting possible dangers in
the pills, the opening of hash and marijuana speakeasies, called
coffee shops, but more properly defined like ganja mats and that
are usually opened with some small curtains during parties.
Bologna has got the largest number of grow and
head shops in Italy and in few places you can buy hash and marijuana. The part of the trade that takes place on the streets like in the University area is not really recommended. There is no major risk but you could experience some annoyance by the police
for buying small quantities. Some of the North Africans or punk
beasts sell low quality when not terrible stuff. Some informal
hash and grass retailing takes place during harvest and seeding
parties at Livello 57 – located in via Muggia 9 - and in the new
concert hall in the city’s outskirts. So you can reckon that in a month
for one time there might be good quality marijuana available at
almost legal conditions.
At some automatic
dispensers it’s possible to buy rolling papers even at night and
although almost nobody smokes tobacco in Italy, there is all
possible paraphernalia that can be bought at the tobacconists.
It’s Bologna!
Italians tend to drink wine at lunch and dinner and
to eat in feisty occasions appetizers, noodles, meat or fish with
vegetables and a cake followed by coffee and occasionally by
‘grappa’, a quite strong liquor or ‘lemoncello’, a lemon alcoholic
drink. Wine is mostly of good quality. What makes Bolognese
cuisine very famous in the world are the hand made pastas,
tagliatelle band noodles, tortellini, ravioli and passatelli that
are some short long dumplings of parmesan cheese of the area, eggs
and flour served in a soup. Parma cheese and row ham are known
worldwide. You can buy these products through the industrial
distribution all over the world but just in this region and around
the city of Bologna you can enjoy the real thing!
Although Bologna is a quite expensive city there are
some good and cheap ‘trattoria’ like Fantoni in the quarter of
Pratello, which is famous for the many pubs and wine pubs. Close
to the city’s main street, that is via Indipendenza, is located
the ‘Il Rosso’ Trattoria - Largo Respighi - with some 10 menus and
also an extremely pleasant, good and cheap greek eatery called ‘To
Steki’; another place that needs to be mentioned is ‘The Place’ at
Piazza Verdi with its ‘veranda’ in face of the City Theatre, a
quite privileged view on the drug scene and at all the freaks
living in the middle of the University ranging from the underdog
to professor Umberto Eco. That is another point where to find
headshops selling almost everything but marijuana that you can
purchase and smoke outside the big pubs. Actually lots of police
cameras are set on this area and also in front of the best candy
and liquor store of the city, that is Drogheria Calzolari - via
Petroni 9 - where Stefano Del Fiore, a Bolognese poet and wine
expert will introduce you to the arts of Barolo and Pinot Gris.
But around 8.30 pm he must close his store bending the head to the
orders of the Chinese, reclaiming everybody not to hang around in
the streets. Mr Delfiore has translated into the Bolognese dialect
the writings of Omar Khayyam, a Persian poet of the Middle Ages
that is famous for his odes to wine and water.
The legal Italian cannabis
’Canva’ is the most known Bolognese word and
stands for the importance of the cannabis industry in the Middle
Ages. The Holy Petronius, the Saint that is considered to be the
founder of Cristianity, shows in the most interesting hemp fresco
of the central Via Indipendenza that hemp was somehow mandatory at
that time.
As industrial hemp was
rediscovered in Western Europe the Italian police was in panic. In
order to make low THC hemp legal Italians thought to do it better
than other Europeans. There is a dozen of species that are allowed
to be cultivated in Europe.
Around 1995 an
Italian government commission with Police Minister Nicola Mancino
reported that the Italian police was upset to have hemp plants on
the fields and could not stand the idea to have the fields uncut.
They pretended to have each single plant equipped with some
translucent colours like the highway signals or some other
abstruse requirement. This Attila feeling of the police, quite
psychotic, was transferred to some scientists that eventually were
ordered to manipulate the outlook of fibre hemp plants by bombing
them with gamma rays. The result was the new Italian variety called Red
Petiole that is very similar to Durban skunk and of virtually no
commercial or recreational use.
By
inoculating rats and mice with THC the Bolognese researchers of
ICI - Institute of Industrial Cultivations - produced some testers
for plants but possible to be used on humans. If there is a not
completely wrong legend about transgenic marijuana is the
assumption that in Bologna there could possibly be something
similar.
Drug laws in Italy: right or
wrong it cannot be a crime.
Actually the
Italian drug laws are considered quite liberal for European
standards and this especially after the 1993 Referendum that
decriminalized the personal use. But most of the actions people
undertake to make this use possible are considered criminal acts
like ‘passing’, probably the most common crime of the world. No
joint or ‘canna’ as we call it in Italy is never out.
The postfascist party of Mr.Fini, the current
Italian Foreign Minister, is pushing in the Berlusconi government
to have his bill on drugs approved that abolishes any distinction
among marijuana and heroin or cocaine, introduces penalties for
very small quantities and also favours hard drugs versus
marijuana. ‘It’s not soft, it is drug’ is the motto of the
National Alliance, nicknamed as the National Abstinence Movement,
and that is lead by a bunch of former fascists like Minister Mirko
Tremaglia, of the Hitlerite Repubblic of Salò, the last stronghold
of Mussolini in Italy during WWII before being executed by the
partisans. As a matter of fact the flame of the burial of
Mussolini is still the icon of the party that pretends to condemn
his fascist origins and that jeopardizes the Italian tokers.
If the bill of Mr. Fini will end being
approved, the jail population will at least double. Mr.Castelli of
the Northern League, that is serving as the Justice Minister in
the Berlusconi’s government, recently uttered that the actual
60.000 cons could easily become 400.000. The League’s icon, the
rose of the alps, is very similar to the hemp leaf. Evil grass
opposed to the good grass represented by marijuana. This year the
Antiprohibitionist Street Parade was dedicated to Joe Ales, of
Pantelleria, the most southerner island of Europe, that got caught
by the local police with three small marijuana plants and that
killed himself after being labeled in the local press as a
dangerous gangster.
No Drugs No Future
This year the parade enjoyed a tasty and
theoretical appetizer at Cappella Farnese, the top-level
chamber of the Commune of Bologna, during a forum dedicated to the
future dimensions of drugs in a globalized world where there is an
increasingly dual use of legal or illegal products as recreational
or performing means. The discussion was lead by the German
sociologist Gunter Amendt, known in Germany for his enlightening
book ‘Sexfront of 1968’. His actual work was exposed on a lecture
around prohibition and social control strategies. The title of his
latest and just published work is ‘No Drugs No Future - Drugs in
the Age of Social Anxiety’. As Mr Amendt puts it ‘everything has
been told, now it’s time to act politically’. It goes without
saying to legalize marijuana as the first step of a drug policy
based on the practical reason.
Amendt who was
a long time consultant of the Swiss and German parliaments told
the Bolognese and Roman public about the paradigm shift on drug
evaluation concerning also legal substances like alcohol and
tobacco. The antiquity of humans in front of the globalization has
put everybody at the verge of madness. Even Cofferati, law and
order mayor on the footpath of Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher,
seems to go in that direction in his idea of transforming the
Italian capital of sex and hemp into a dorm.
The Bologna Underground Network describes the new
urban vibe that ‘Coffi’ is stimulating: ‘Here we come on the
doorway with an arm out to be able to toke and one in to be able
to drink a beer, while our ideas are still going in and out freely
from any place. Here we are in Bologna that just one year ago was
all longing for a change. Bologna was a dreaming, hoping and
voting thing. And now what’s up? Cofferati made beer illegal and
stirred a very confused debate around legality that seems to
become the figue leaf of a political and economical disaster.
Mr Alberto Ronchi, the Emilia-Romagna
Minister of Culture, recently said that the Street Rave Parade
against prohibition is also to be viewed as a great event
regardless of possible complaints. Promptly the Chinese suggested
him to host the parade in his own town instead of Bologna.
Unfortunately for him the Antiprohibitionist Street Parade’
numbers will be hanging ten and make it again next year. The fix
is in.
