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By Root 684 0

an orderly and submissive fashion; these fail to attract much attention, but their frequency undermines the resistance of those who do not wish to go quietly. That is the most unobtrusive kind of violence-the violence of the creeping corrosion of solidarity. Other pressures are similarly muted. Intimidation can be both discreet and unrelenting; at some point residents simply give up. One favored device is a constant stream of rings on the doorbell at night-a technique of slow attrition that is especially effective because, given its small increments of minor nuisance, the police usually refuse to take it seriously even though it is illegal. A few cases of harassment by proprietors become more dramatic and obvious, usually because their central victims are elderly and infirm and thus satisfy the "folkloric" aesthetic that journalists-unhelpfully from the perspective of most of the rest of those evicted-find compelling as copy.

One or two cases acquire real drama from the determination of a few stalwarts to defy the new owners. Such is the story of the ten families left in the palazzo at 23, Via degli Ibernesi. Their protracted battle against eviction illustrates the dangers of initial success; as the affably accessible Green Party senator, Athos De Luca, told me in an interview, once a case achieves a certain visibility, this can actually work against the tenants' interests; the property value actually increases because of the reflected fame of the case, and astute proprietors are not averse to taking advantage of this, while at the same time blaming their tenants for having brought the increase on themselves through the fuss they have created. Moreover, corporate proprietors can afford to wait for far longer than can most private individuals; time is on their side.

On the other hand, I was told by a source inside the city administration, cases in the historic center of Rome involve so many special interests that tenants would in fact need some fairly spectacular publicity before the city government could be induced to intervene. So tenants in places like Monti are often caught both ways: they need the publicity, but in some cases that publicity can add value to the property and increase a proprietor's determination to sell or rent at a huge profit.

Eviction is the most brutally tangible evidence of the emergent new order. The stakes are enormously high: for the older residents, a way of life based on neighborhood and kinship is unraveling faster than they can grasp the magnitude of the threat; for the new entrepreneurs there are enormous profits to be made. The churches have their own reasons for carrying out evictions, and the city administration-clearly strapped for available spaces in which to house the growing population of homeless and indigent citizens-is unsympathetic to those who might make claims on its property. Such a person was the laundryman in the lane leading directly to the Colosseum. His family had been summarily dispossessed of their apartment during the Fascist years, when the grandiose excavations of the ancient city took priority over the lives of ordinary people and the beauties of Renaissance and baroque domestic architecture, but they were allowed to remain as tenants on a temporary basis. Then World War II supervened and the house was spared demolition; the postwar city government, however, then invited the Fine Arts Inspectorate to assume responsibility for the restoration of the entire stretch of street and adamantly refused to consider the possibility that the apartments belonged, ethically speaking, to the residents. The laundryman described this response as "an abuse that they're carrying on" (nn abuso the stanno facendo~, using the language by which the state ordinarily prosecutes citizens found to be in violation of zoning and conservation laws. But his rhetorical turning of the tables was of no avail in the practical sphere of gaining possession of his apartment.

The city government does at least try to house those who have already suffered eviction and have no other resources. Its failure