Olga Raccagni

From Umanità Nova
May 12, 2025

She left us a few days before April 25th. She was always fiercely anti-fascist, proletarian, and with a clear class orientation. As a young woman she had been a communist but, crossing paths on the terrain of struggle, had become an anarchist.

In the No Tav movement she was a constant presence. Yet it was certainly not easy for her. One leg offended by polio, she swayed on the Clarea road, leaning on her silver pommel cane.

She had great courage. We remember her at the Free Republic of Magdalena and then in the summers of struggle at the self-built stone cabin as a bulwark against capitalist barbarism. She slept in a little camping tent with the spirit of a girl, even though the years were not few.

Some nights she would go to the fences and challenge the policemen and soldiers on guard duty.

At every garrison, there was a loud chorus of profanity directed at the men and women in uniform.

She had no hair on her tongue and always spoke her mind at every opportunity: always biting, ironic, cheerful.

A great vegan cook, she offered her art for the support of our struggles.

As long as she could, she was in the front row on April 25th and May 1st and at many events.

When she left us, it took the city council almost ten days to find her a place in the cemetery. Even when dead, the poor have to wait in line. We are sure she would have snickered at that.

The municipality had placed a cross on the coffin, which comrades immediately had unsealed.

At the funeral, on the eve of May Day, there were many of us. Anarchist and No TAV flags. Memories and songs.

Another piece of us was gone: our community of ideas, affections, and struggles tightened in our commitment to continue and do better, with the strength that those who are gone leave us.

Ciao Olga.

How can we forget your middle finger aimed at priests and policemen? Your irreverent challenge to the world in which we are forced to live?

The comrades of the Fat

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