ACTIVATION OF MILITANT NETWORKS: AN INTRODUCTION

Born in the “red” city of Reggio Emilia in 1950, Prospero Gallinari was one of the founders of the Red Brigades in 1970. The son of a peasant, he grew up in a family and community in which resistance against fascism and left-wing political activism was deeply rooted. In his autobiography, he remembers the relevance, in his adolescence, of the “old communists I had the good luck to meet. All people, neighbours or relatives, most of which had been partisans. . .. They were product of the resistance” (Gallinari 2006: 13). In this strongly politicized “red territorial culture” of the 1950s, his political career started when he was still in his early teens. He recalls:

Socialization to left-wing values therefore happened during his childhood, especially while listening to his grandfather’s tales not only of the antifascist struggle but also of rebellion as an expression of human dignity. He wrote in fact of his “family path” to politics, which began when he was just six years old, listening to stories of life experiences in 1919–20, “when the fascists started to become aggressive” (ibid.: 20–1), and also of the workers’ struggles. The rebellious history of the red Reggio Emilia in fact plays a central role in Gallinari’s narrative: it is a story of peasants’ struggles, the building of workers’ cooperatives, first experiences with socialism at the beginning of the twentieth century, and factories “occupied in 1920 by the workers under the motto ‘Ag vol Lenin!’ (We need Lenin), with the aim of creating a Soviet inside the factory” (ibid.: 25). The history of Reggio Emilia is therefore a history of contentious confrontation with the state in which the entire community participated.