Italy
Her whole life ahead, by Paolo Virzi (2008)
Story of a 25 year-old woman working in a call-centre, the movie is a grotesque and tragic-comic depiction of Italian precarious workers (original title: Tutta la vita davanti).
Marta, protagonist of the story, is an excellent philosophy graduate who, not being able to find a better job, ends up working in a call centre of Multiple, a multinational company selling futuristic and useless home appliances.
Anti-fascist demonstration in Milan
Yesterday, 5th April 2009, a conference held by Forza Nuova, the Italian movement of the far-Right, took place in Milan.
Many people, among which partisans, social centres, unions, civil society organizations, politicians and Jewish organizations gathered in the main squares of the city to demostrate against Forza Nuova conference. For days they had been asking the mayor of Milan not to allow the conference to take place.
Rome: 2.7 million people demonstrate against the crisis
According to the Italian union Cgil, today - 4th April - 2.7 million people marched in the streets of Rome to demonstrate against the current financial crisis.
According to the police headquarters, only 200,000 people were there. In reality, five different processions took hours to get to the main meeting point, the Circo Massimo.
Italy: the Wave, Cobas and social centres against the G14
Last Saturday - 28th March 2009 - sixty thousand people walked into the main squares of Rome against the G14 on welfare and social support measures which started on Sunday.
The demonstration has been described as unauthorized by the Roman council and violated the protocol on demonstrations recently approved also by the council and the main Italian unions. In fact, according to the protocol, demonstrations must follow a path decided by the council in order not to create traffic jams.
Student protests across Europe
As neo-liberal education reforms are planned across Europe, students in the continent have been taking to the streets leading to battles with riot police in several cities.
On Wednesday morning, the day before the general strike over one million workers, students clashed with riot police in Paris after a demonstration over the university reforms. Universities across France have been barricaded and picketed for almost two months in a standoff over these higher education reforms.
Institutionalization from below: The unions and social movements - 1970s Italy
The chapter of Robert Lumley's excellent book on the mass struggles in Italy of the 60s and 70s detailing how the unions re-gained control of the social movements and channelled them into "representative" politics.
States of Emergency
Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978
Robert Lumley
First published by Verso 1990
Chapter 17
The working class struggle against the crisis: self-reduction of prices in Italy, 1975 - Bruno Ramirez
Bruno Ramirez's analysis of the Italian working class' response to the economic crisis of the 1970s, with particular focus on "the refusal to comply with price increases of essential services", also known as 'self-reduction'.
With an inflation rate of over 25%, widespread unemployment, and increasing repression, Italy's current economic crisis shows how far capital is willing to push its attack against the living conditions of the working class.
Right to strike under threat in Italy
The Italian government is in the process of examining a new bill which will restrict the right to call a strike. The bill might become soon a law.
The bill will introduce a so-called “virtual strike” (you call the strike but you go to work) for the categories of workers considered “essential” and the possibility to call a strike for the workers within the public transport only for those unions which have 50 per cent of representation of the sector. These are only two examples of the novelties this bill will lead to.
Demonstrations in Milan against anti-migrant laws
Last weekend in Milan 30,000 people demonstrated with CGIL union against xenophobic anti-migrant laws recently introduced in Italy. These laws have been proposed with the usual rationale of more security for citizens.
The Italian parliament have recently issued laws such as one which will allow doctors to denounce patients without proper immigration documents. Another law will put immigrants in a detention centre without having committed any crime and Berlusconi has also recently approved a decree (apparently “against-rape”) that legalises rounding up immigrants.
Hundreds of migrants break out of Italian detention centre
700 migrants have broken down fences and escaped from the Lampedusa detention centre on the Mediterranean island in protest at the conditions there.
The camp was built for 850 detainees but currently houses over 2000. The UN recently urged the Italian government to address the "difficult humanitarian situation." After their escape the migrants converged on the town centre where they staged a protest, shouting "freedom" and "help us." The mayor of described it as Lampedusa "a very tense situation."
