Translated by a comrade supportive of the ongoing struggles.

The last two weeks have been rather atypical in Italy: we have seen a strong wave in wildcat strikes, blockades¹ and spontaneous demonstrations, cutting across regions and economic sectors. Such movement sees the youth at the forefront, gaining more space day by day thanks to the growing opposition to the ruling elite and to the rising living cost. However, rather than offering a focus on the demands and the political significance of the hectic momentum running throughout the country, from North to South, mainstream media have invariably criminalised the demonstrations in the largest cities (notably Milan, Turin and Bologna), which featured clashes with the police as well as attacks on luxury and corporate shops. The narrative has heavily focused on dramatic damages and on a supposed menace to national security, attempting (as usual) to divide the movement into “good ones” and “bad ones”.

However, at the same time such a portrayal has completely hidden from the media storytelling the protests organized by farmers, truck drivers and fishery workers: such protests have vigorously emerged in Campania, Apulia, Calabria and Sicily.² The national government has even denounced supposed “mob and organized crime infiltrations” behind the blockades: this is the usual trope used when most convenient to attack social movements and to tear solidarity into pieces.

We know that the truth is rather different: the halt in the logistics and transportation sectors has engaged in a short span of time lorry drivers, parcel couriers, workers in markets and large retail operators. This has caused a damage close to 40 million euros, empty supermarket shelves throughout the whole of Sicily, spontaneous marches and continuous sit-ins at the entrances of the largest Sicilian cities: a rather bigger damage than the one brought by the broken store windows in Milan, immediately condemned by the entirety of the parliamentary hemicycle.

Overall, a diverse set of praxis and subjects, yet bringing the same demands, is crossing the squares of Italy and of the South. Sicily is currently used as an internal colony by the Italian state for the purpose of energy production, resource extraction, military complexes’ installation and the development of prisons and deportation centres,³ due to its strategic position in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea: here, the truck drivers’ mobilization has immediately been co-opted by the government branches. One of the main business organizations of the sector has promptly obtained a farce-agreement with the Transportation Minister Matteo Salvini. This deal is built upon the promise of generous tax discounts to the largest transportation businesses and promotes the distribution of already-allocated funds (yet never assigned), while bypassing the workers’ issues, or structurally cutting fuel taxes (“accise”⁴) to reduce actual petrol costs for the whole population.

To say the least, the agreement has offered breadcrumbs, but has not ended the people’s rage: on the night of the 21st of October, while the agreement was signed with the Government, both Palermo and Catania have seen spontaneous demonstrations which have resisted up to the following morning, to be then halted by the Government – assisted by trade union federations such as CGIL, CISL and UIL⁵ - under the menaces of criminal charges and intervention of security forces.

No concrete proposal has insofar come from the Government to halt the downward spiral of rising living costs and growing fuel prices. Instead, the political class’s unconditioned support for the USA in the war on Iran, together with widespread financing for rearmament and the arms’ industry, are enhancing the tendency to the incurable permanent crisis of the present economic system.

For the time being, the blockades and the wildcat strikes have stopped: however, the mobilization is undergoing reorganization, in the forms of school occupations run by students (which have actively spoken in support of the farmers and the drivers) and of popular committees against the cost of living.

In the coming weeks, in the light of the coming general strikes of the 30th of October and 20th of November,⁵ the juncture between the youth and the workers’ struggles against war and living costs has a strong potential: we believe it can allow to take back rights and legitimacy in areas, against a political class which has proven to be deaf to the land’s needs, and against a development model which shows itself to be each day more unjust and destructive.