l’Asilo
At the end of 2016, the former Asilo Filangieri presented a public document to account for the amount of political and cultural activities that had taken place within this commons in the 54 months since its occupation in 2012. The aim was also to make visible and communicable the content of the civic profitability of the commons.
Villa Medusa
Villa Medusa as a centre of theoretical production and critique of the real. In a busy place crossed by different souls and political sentiments, initiatives of a more bluntly political nature could certainly not be missing. Over the years, the Villa and its inhabitants have increasingly taken on a central role in the battle for the reclaiming and reopening of the former Italsider areas (long before Renzi and the commissariat crept in). The more strictly territorial issues are combined with those of an international and national nature, many have been hosted to give talks and discussions on the struggles they have gone through, and countless debates have resulted, from professors to militants, passing through inhabitants who experience contradictions on a daily basis. With this list we hope to provide a comprehensive picture of what we mean by theoretical political activities and discussions.
La rete dei beni comuni
The Neapolitan network of the commons, collectively organising itself in an assembly manner, has at times jointly communicated its positions.
21 luglio 2016 – Joint Statement
Villa Medusa and the former Lido Pola in Bagnoli, the ex-Opg (ex Monastery S. Eframo nuovo) and the Giardino Liberato (ex Convento delle Teresiane) in Materdei, the ex Conservatorio di Santa Fede (Liberata) and the Scugnizzo Liberato (excarcere Filangieri ex Convento delle Cappuccinelle) in the historical centre together with the ex Schipa in via Salvator Rosa, are not assigned with resolution no. 446/2016, but recognised as “spaces that by their very vocation (territorial location, history, physical characteristics) have become of civic and collective use, due to their value as commons”.
Declaration of urban civic and collective use
The communities of reference of the estates of Giardino Liberato (salita San Raffaele 3 – ex Convento delle Teresiane); ex Lido Pola (via Nisida 24); Villa Medusa (via di Pozzuoli, 110); Scugnizzo Liberato (Salita Pontecorvo, 46 – ex Convento Cappuccinelle – ex Carcere juvenile Filangieri), Santa Fede Liberata (via San Giovanni Maggiore Pignatelli, 5 – ex Conservatorio Santa Maria della Fede); ex Schipa (via Salvator Rosa, 195) – “recognised” and “identified” by council resolution 446/2016 “as common goods emerging and perceived by the citizenship as environments of civic development and as such strategic” – together with the communities of reference of the estates ex Convitto delle Monachelle (via Raimondo Annecchino 123, 125 Arco Felice – Pozzuoli), Cap80126 – Centro Autogestito Piperno (via Adriano 60, Naples 80126), Casa delle Donne (Rampe San Giovanni Maggiore Pignatelli, 12 Naples 80134) and Villa De Luca (piazzetta Lieti a Capodimonte, Naples 80100, via San Rocco 68) – which will also soon be recognised and identified as “emerging commons” – after having discussed and questioned the ongoing experiments at length, make the following Declaration of Civic and Collective Urban Use their own, as an act of self-formation.
Starting in 2015, in view of the 2016 municipal elections, the social movements and occupied spaces in Naples (7 of which would be recognised as emerging commons), gave birth to the Massa Critica process, a neo-municipalist initiative that intended to spread the practice of public assemblies to write the city’s political programme from the bottom up and to spread the practice of self-government. After the first general assemblies, Massa Critica was divided into the following working groups: Culture, Education and Research; Environment, Territory and Right to the City; Labour, Services and Public Finance; Democracy and Self-government.
“Massa Critica is a group of people, collectives, committees, associations and social networks that have decided to undertake a political path open to the city, which aspires to build a large popular agora, focusing on the desire for discussion, participation and decision-making on the government of the territory. Our aim is to have an impact on the government of our territories, to continue that path of active resistance that makes the city of Naples an exceptional laboratory of self-organisation, which at times has managed to dictate the political agenda even to municipal administrations; to open up the places of political discussion and generalise them; to rethink forms, methods, contents and ways of relating”.
Massa Critica
Reflections on the commons movement
This section collects the texts and political articles of reflection written in the course of the history of the Neapolitan commons, a history intertwined with the urban social, ecological and neo-municipalist movements, both Italian and international.