Black Out: Giornale Metropolitano Delle Lotte Autonome (“‘Metropolitan Journal of Autonomous Struggles”) is a bit of a mystery. An internal note states it was sent to the printers on 1 February 1977 as a supplement to issue 24-25 of Rosso. However, it references the New York City Black Out of 1977, which occurred in July of that year, and there was no issue 24-25 of Rosso (there was a #23-24 and a #25-26). Mangano (1998, p. 93) states that it was published in February of 1978.
Black Out was produced during the years of lead and its content relates to struggles in Milan in that context. It positions itself as a place for analysis and development for collective struggle in the wake of the heavy year and movement of 1977, within the theoretical framework of class composition: “The enormous pulverization of the struggle movement in Milan has pushed us to create this newspaper as a possibility to have an instrument of connection of aggregation…giving voice to that enormous proletarian layer that has found in the movement of 77 its political reference and that today and scattered in the enormous metropolis of Milan” (a very rough translation from the introductory article).
The publication lists Emilio Vesce, an important militant in the Italian extra-parliamentary left, as the director responsible for the publication (Vesce was also the director of Rosso in 1978). Mangano (1998, p. 93) notes that there are other issues, though it’s unclear to us how many were published. Some of them, through the late 1980s (issue 9) are made available through the Archivio Autonomia site, here, with different subtitles.
This issue of the journal is scarce with none available in the trade at the time of writing and a single institutionally-held copy in the world (at Yale’s Beinecke Library). We have scanned the issue we hold and uploaded it to Libcom, here, for those interested.
New York Archives of Autonomist Marxism 