General Strike! Italy Comes to a Standstill

InfoAut || A day of general strikes: even more massive numbers than the first demonstrations last fall. Blockades across Italy and marches of tens of thousands, from the cities to the provinces.

Against the war, against the high cost of living, against the rearmament promoted by the Meloni government. And again, against a precarious and undignified life, to say enough to the sacrifices that the Italian government, along with governments across Europe, want to impose on the population. The turnout was impressive, from South to North, over a million throughout Italy.

The country, which for years has been portrayed as a melting pot of indifference and which at best would have liked to “do as France did,” in recent weeks, riding the wave of the movement that began a year ago in support of Palestine and against government complicity in the genocide, is sending a clear signal: the time has come to raise our heads.

Thanks to the young people who, faced with the burden of a stolen future, have been occupying schools and universities for a month to assert their existence, to the young people who angrily reject the brazenness of injustice, today, thanks to the call for a general strike called by the Unione Sindacale di Base, workers who have no guarantee of seeing their work recognized have joined forces. But precariousness and exploitation are no longer an accepted horizon.

The farmers and truck drivers who have blocked goods in the South have been saying it for weeks, along with students, families, and anyone who identifies the cause of this situation in political decisions from above, subject to European and Trumpian diktats: there is no more willingness.

The Meloni government must reckon with the fact that the people in the streets are pushing this system forward, and if they decide to stop, no show of strength will be able to withstand the challenge. The crumbs of a budget bill that attempts to disguise the government’s sole interest in finding the money for rearmament have no chance of convincing the population.

In Bologna, Pisa, Livorno, Rome, Turin, Treviso, Milan, Reggio Calabria, Palermo, Bari, Trieste, Pavia, Vicenza, Modena, Padua, Mestre, Cosenza, Naples, Genoa the main arteries of the cities, the ring road junctions and the ports were blocked.

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