15 Years of Occupation & Self-Management

In 2002, during the street parade of the general strike, 5000 students, temporary workers and migrants occupied an abandoned building on Tiburtina. Strike SpA was born, an occupation that has set itself the goal of transforming a private, abandoned space into a public space: a private property in a common, non-communal, but self-managed property. From the beginning, we have argued that the "problem" raised by the occupation did not simply concern the private owner who demanded the eviction, but the city as a whole, its new urban structure and the distribution of resources for social and cultural policies. We have called upon the Municipality of Rome in this case, claiming, with a view to relaunching, the acquisition of space and its return for public use, to affirm the right to self-management as an answer to common desires and needs, as a driver of sociality and knowledge production. The negotiation began when a Regulatory Plan was approved, which very little looked at the real needs of those who live in the city. This space, a blue area destined (from the New Regulatory Plan) to use public services, without occupation would have been the victim of speculation that is emerging around the Tiburtina station, which is about to become one of the largest railway junctions in Europe.