Version imprimableParis calls? Rome answers! We are truly delighted that today’s magnificent Via Maestra [1] march, on Saturday 17 October, concluded with the announcement that the CGIL [2] will call a general strike for 20 November, alongside the European student movements who, on that day, will down tools and take to the streets in many cities to protest against rearmament, austerity and war.
For us, this is a convergence that is as natural as it is necessary, centred on the slogans that students are also championing in our country.
Between now and 20 November, we have the time needed to organise the general strike in workplaces and across the country: any other mobilisation we take part in between now and then will help to spread a climate of revolt and hope – that very atmosphere we began to breathe during yesterday’s student marches.
Any emphasis on violence, in relation to this autumn, is misleading and deceptive: young people demanding a future for all are not violent. As in Paris, it is police repression that is extremely violent; it is an act of violence to prevent the olive harvest in the West Bank; it is also an act of violence that was perpetrated yesterday against the ANPI [3] in Rome, which was excluded from the commemoration of the 1943 raids [4] by those who claim to transform the memory of the deportation into an alibi for colonial and genocidal policies and who, for this reason, ally themselves with the political and moral heirs of those who carried out the deportations.
17 October 2026
Translated by International Viewpoint from le Radici del Sindacato.
