Venice, activists dismantle turnstiles barring entrance to historic center: the city is not an amusement park

Revolt against the turnstiles installed in Venice to regulate tourist flows during the May Day bridge (controlled by municipal police, they were supposed to close if there were too many tourists visiting the city). Activists from Laboratorioccupato Morion and Centro Sociale Rivolta went to Piazzale Roma, near Venice Santa Lucia station, and dismantled the turnstiles, in a concrete action against what was seen as a measure that turned the city into a kind of amusement park.

Dozens of activists took part in the action. “These checkpoints,” they said during the dismantling of the turnstiles, as reported on the Globalproject.info Facebook page, “are a demonstration of the will of this administration to definitively turn Venice into a theme park. They are symbolic of the decision to think of our city as an uninhabited space, solely for tourist use, to be exploited and put to value. We need housing and policies to facilitate residency, not checkpoints at the gates of the city.”

“The images of the barred city, of selective entry, of the reduction of the urban to a theme park,” write Laboratorioccupato Morion activists instead, “would elicit a bitter smile if they were yet another provocation by yet another artist intent on denouncing the progressive ’death of Venice.’ Instead, they arouse indignation because they symbolize the final surrender of an administration that not only covers itself with global ridicule but simultaneously throws up its hands in the face of the exodus emergency, the demographic and social impoverishment of the city it administers.” And they add that this is a measure that does not affect hit-and-run tourism: “We know how these things too often end up, the rich tourists always find a way through the barriers, where instead the poor, the migrants, those who do not conform to the dictates of the insufferable decorum of the well-meaning [...] remain stuck. Venice will have hope if it revitalizes its social and productive fabric and if it is able to free itself from the parasite of rent. Let us start by freeing Venice from the turnstiles. This is also a way to take back the city.”

The torn gates were later restored after a few hours.

In the photo by Globalproject.info, one of the moments of the social center activists’ action.

Venice, activists dismantle turnstiles barring entrance to historic center: the city is not an amusement park

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