The Battle of Valle Giulia

Featuring interviews with

Sandro Portelli: From 2004 to 2008 he served as Rome’s Mayor’s advisor on historical memory; in 2005-6 he was a member of Rome’s city council. He is the founder and chairman of the Circolo Gianni Bosio, an independent organization for the study and promotion of people’s cultures, folk music and oral history. He has served as visiting professor, research fellow and in other capacities at several universities worldwide, including Manchester, Aberdeen, Columbia, University of Kentucky, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. In 2013, we was awarded an honorary degree from the University of La Plata.

Nathan Greppi, journalist and scholar of Italian far right movements and the ideology of "Rosabrunismo"

Alberto Pantaloni, PhD in Historical Sciences and Documents, co-editor of Historia Magistra, and author of La dissoluzione di Lotta continua e il movimento del '77 and 1969: L'assemblea operai studenti: Una storia dell'autunno caldo, both recently published through Derive Approdi.

Introduction music by my kid, Francis Ross.

Photo of a young Adriano Sofri engaging in passive resistance at the Scuola Normal di Pisa prior to the founding of Lotta Continua in 1969 (found in Aldo Cazzullo, Il Ragazzi Che Volevano Fare la Rivoluzione: 1968-1978: Storia Di Lotta Continua, Mondadori Editore, Milano, 2015).

TOC

0.00: Introduction

14.04: Influences

17.50: Reforms, Occupations, and Conflict

26.60: The Movement of '67

34.29: Battle of Valle Giulia

44.57: "The Guerrilla Phase"

54.55: Disturbing Signs

Works Cited:

Hilwig, Stuart John. A young democracy under siege: the Italian response to the student protests of 1968. The Ohio State University, 2000.

Lumley, Robert. States of emergency: Cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, 1989, found at https://files.libcom.org/files/Robert%20Lumley-%20States%20of%20emergency%3B%20Cultures%20of%20revolt%20in%20Italy%20from%201968%20to%201978.pdf 

Mammone, Andrea. "The transnational reaction to 1968: Neo-fascist fronts and political cultures in France and Italy." Contemporary European History 17, no. 2 (2008): 213-236.

Poggioli, Sylvia. "Valle Giulia Has Taken On Mythological Stature," NPR, June 23, 2008.

Portelli, Alessandro. The battle of Valle Giulia: Oral history and the art of dialogue. University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Ravelli, Marco, "Il '68 a Torino. Gli Esordi," 1991 (as cited in Hilwig).

Roggero, Gigi. "Organized spontaneity: Class struggle, workers’ autonomy, and soviets in Italy." WorkingUSA 13, no. 2 (2010): 201-212.

Weinberg, Leonard and William Lee Eubank, The Rise and Fall of Italian Terrorism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987).