No Meloni Day, marches across Italy and clashes in Turin

Two separate mobilisations brought students into the streets yesterday in dozens of Italian cities: a national one called by the SISA union, the other limited to schools in the province of Livorno and called by USB Pubblico Impiego Scuola. The marches, united under the slogan “No Meloni Day”, crossed the country from north to south against the policies of the government led by Giorgia Meloni.

In Turin the day took a more tense turn. The march, which set off from piazza XVIII Dicembre, ended at Palazzo Nuovo, home to the university’s humanities faculties. During the demonstration some students threw stones at police officers, who responded by using water cannons to disperse those present.

Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara commented on the incidents with harsh words:

“This is not dissent but political thuggery” — Giuseppe Valditara, Minister of Education

In Rome, organisers estimated the participation of around 20,000 students, coming according to RaiNews from more than fifty schools. In front of the Ministry of Education there were episodes of tension, which Minister Valditara described as an “attack on institutions”, as well as an episode of political thuggery, thus reaffirming the line already expressed regarding the events in Turin.

Similar mobilisations were also recorded in Milan, Florence and Genoa, according to RaiNews, a sign of a protest that had a truly national spread and was not limited to individual universities or cities. For their part, the students did not stop at the day of mobilisation: they announced a new general strike for October 30, this time together with workers, thus widening the front of the protest beyond the world of schools and universities.

The confrontation between the government and the student movement is thus playing out on two parallel levels: on one hand the street protest, which repeats and strengthens itself from one date to the next with a new appointment already set; on the other hand the interpretation given by the executive, which frames the episodes of tension — in particular those in Turin and those in front of the ministry in Rome — as acts of political thuggery rather than as forms of legitimate dissent. A distinction that is not merely lexical, because it also shapes the institutions’ response in the upcoming mobilisations already scheduled.

The next test is set for October 30, the date on which students and workers will strike together for the first time in an explicit way.