From Umanità Nova
February 4, 2026
In recent months, we have seen the passing of important comrades—people who, through their presence, passion, and dedication, have left an indelible mark on our lives and our activism. Just a few weeks after the passing of Gianpiero Bottinelli (Umanità Nova, December 7, 2025), on Monday, January 19, 2026, the still-young Claudio Grigolo, a social worker and longtime activist with the Carlo Vanza Anarchist Circle in Bellinzona, left us.
A music lover, always torn between Fugazi and Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, he knew how to make the Circle a place of conviviality through his presence, as well as a space for documentation, research, protest, construction, and resistance. Remembering his youthful commitment to environmentalism in ecological organizations, he accompanied comrade Marco Camenisch with extreme generosity through his struggles and imprisonment. An indomitable anti-militarist commitment that cost him imprisonment forged his solidarity with draft resisters, conscientious objectors, and deserters. In recent years, thanks in part to his keen professional sensibility, he had taken to heart the battle against the establishment of a closed “educational” center for minors. Moreover, as early as the 1990s, he had been a member of the Committee of the Swiss League for Human Rights—Italian Switzerland Section, which was active on prison issues and against police repression.
From time to time, he also contributed to the anarchist press. In an article for the first issue of Voce Libertaria, he wrote: “It therefore seems increasingly urgent to unite the forces of dissent (radically opposed to the bourgeoisie and reformists of every stripe) and further develop a project that gives form and voice to those deemed incompatible by the current system of super-exploitation, which continues to ignore the essential reasons and necessities for living a dignified life free from all forms of oppression.”
But life shows us in a dramatic way that the struggle is not merely political, social, or militant: it is profoundly human. It is made up of bonds, trust, sharing, and solidarity, but also of absences that weigh heavily on us and remind us how precious every moment is. These losses should teach us not to take anything for granted. They remind us that relationships must be nurtured, connections maintained, calls made, and mutual respect practiced every day. Every gesture of closeness, no matter how small, becomes a way to honor those who are no longer with us and to strengthen those who remain. Let us always support one another, with sincerity and courage. Let us accept the difficulties, share them, and continue to fight together, keeping alive the values, passions, and ideas of those who have left us. May the memory of their faces, their words, and their actions be a driving force to persevere, to be more attentive, more united, more human. Their absence does not separate us: it calls us to be stronger, together, in their memory.
Petra – Circolo Anarchico Carlo Vanza – Bellinzona
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