Requiem for the Neoliberal Left

Milan independent centre for art, culture and research Macao invites everyone to a collective ritual to imagine an alternative to this future, on October 5th, 2018 at 7pm in Piazza della Scala. Here an excerpt of the statement published by Macao after having received notice

“In this phase, we want to be as blunt as possible. We don’t think this is a time for rhetorics, for circumlocutions or moderate responses. There’s too much at stake to not speak directly avoiding that kind of reticence and ambiguity whose only purpose is to safeguard one’s comfort zones. Yeah, MACAO is in jeopardy, but so is the rest of Milan, so is the mere possibility of imagining and building up political spaces rooted in people’s needs and dreams.

On Friday we found out through ANSA that the Municipality of Milano will give over/ sell the liberty buildings of Via Molise to the investment fund run by BNP Paribas. The mechanism is simple: given the cession, the municipality will be able to financially report the value of the buildings included in the fund and “try” to make money by selling public heritage. The fund, that would run until December, has resulted up until now with the partial selling of the buildings that have been assigned to it; the Municipality of Milano has decided to spread it and to prolong its duration, hoping in a good phase for the real estate market, so to not have to repay the sold buildings to the bank.

The buildings of Via Molise have therefore been included in the spreading of this Fund, including MACAO’s building, for a total value of 22 million euros.

And, similarly to auctioned houses, the value of the building is given by its availability, meaning the fact that it is empty, meaning the fact that it will be cleared before being sold. 
So: the debt in the public administrations is growing and the councillor for budgeting clears and sells MACAO.”

Read the full statement here