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"Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying 'I do not agree,'" said one critic of Italy's right-wing prime minister.
Italian labor unions led a massive 24-hour general strike on Monday to protest Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallying in dozens of cities across Italy.
Protesters took to squares, streets, transport hubs, ports, university campuses, and other spaces in more than 75 cities and towns, rallying under the call to "Block Everything." Places including schools, train stations, and retail stores were shut for the day.
"The strike is called in response to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli army, and the threats directed against the... Global Sumud Flotilla, which has on board Italian workers and trade unionists committed to bringing food and basic necessities to the Palestinian population," explained Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a grassroots union confederation known for its militant stance on labor and political issues.
In Rome, tens of thousands of Palestine defenders rallied at the Termini rail station, Italy's largest, with many of the demonstrators occupying the building.
While protest activities snarled traffic in some parts of the Italian capital, many Roman motorists showed solidarity with the demonstrators by honking their horns and raising their fists into the air.
Watch: Pro-Gaza protesters who blocked a highway near Rome were met with visible solidarity from drivers. Regional news coverage of the paralyzed Central Station showed only people expressing support for the protest.Source: Paolo Mossetti on X (@paolomossetti)
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) September 22, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Milan saw an estimated 50,000 people turn out to locations including the central rail station, where some protesters damaged property and clashed with police, who said 10 people were arrested and 60 officers were injured.
“If we don’t block what Israel is doing, if we don’t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,” protester Walter Montagnoli, who is the Base Unitary Confederation's (CUB) national secretary, told The Associated Press at a march in Milan.
In Bologna—home to the world's oldest continuously operating university—students occupied lecture halls and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, including the Tangenziale, the ring highway around the city, where police attacked them with water cannons and tear gas.
Dockworkers and other demonstrators marched and blocked ports in cities including Genoa, Trieste, and Livorno.
Thousands of protesters also blocked the main train station in Naples.
Source: Potere al Popolo via X (@potere_alpopolo)
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) September 22, 2025 at 11:06 AM
In the Adriatic seaside resort of Termoli, hundreds of student-led Palestine defenders rallied in St. Anthony's Square and, with Mayor Nicola Balice's permission, draped a Palestinian flag from the façade of City Hall.
"Faced with such an important subject, the genocide in Palestine, we students... said this would be a nonpartisan demonstration because in the face of what is happening in the Gaza Strip—hospitals bombed, children killed every day—there can be no political ideology," said one Termoli protester. "We must all be united.”
Some participants in Monday's general strike pointed the finger at their own government.
"In the face of what is happening in Gaza you have to decide where you are," Italian General Confederation of Labor leader Maurizio Landini told La Stampa. "If you don’t tell the Israeli government that you have to stop and don't send them more weapons, but instead you keep sending them... you actually become complicit in what’s happening.”
While European nations including Ireland, Norway, Spain, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, and Denmark have formally recognized Palestine or announced their intent to do so since October 2023, Italy has given no indication that it will follow suit. More than 150 of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestine.
Although increasingly critical of Israel's 718-day genocidal assault—which has left at least 241,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza—right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been accused of complicity in genocide for actions including presiding over arms sales to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meloni has rejected the ICC warrants and said Netanyahu would not be arrested if he enters Italy.
"Meloni should listen to the voice of those who are peacefully protesting and asking her to act, rather than curling up to Washington to protect her friend, the war criminal Netanyahu," Giuseppe Conte, who leads the independent progressive Five Star Movement, said Monday on social media. "Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying, 'I do not agree.' And she should stop running away from the debate in Parliament."
If we do not rise up in unprecedented, unified, coordinated resistance now, it will very soon be too late.
Saturday September 6, an even more-atrocious-than-usual Trump social media post pushed the fascist envelope further wide open, creating heightened alarm and urgency. “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” taunted the text above an AI image ripped from Apocalypse Now, superimposing US President Donald Trump’s face on a warzone scene from the classic film. In the background, the Chicago skyline is filled with army helicopters and orange hellfire.
Yet more ominously, Trump’s post went on, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” Yes—Trump is now directly and openly declaring war on American cities.
Sickeningly, the Trump “White House” (using quotes here to emphasize how utterly surreal and beyond-the-pale they are) reposted the open threat with helicopter emojis. As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council noted, with this post Trump “drops all pretense and openly admits the mass raids in Chicago are about ICE raids and deportations (not crime), and essentially declares that he’s going to war with the city.”
The blatant, in-your-face nakedness, vicious meanness, and fearmongering are all the point—a central aspect of fascism is its normalization, the forceful imposing of a new normal. Trump’s ghoulish post this Saturday took this to new heights and depths and cannot be ignored or diminished.
Trump’s rapidly intensifying fascism is on daily display, everywhere: the military takeover of Washington, DC, and soon Chicago and other cities, violating both federal law and local will; unmarked vans with the masked, unidentified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounding people up and detaining and deporting them without any due process; his constant declarations that he can do whatever he wishes because he is president, such as violating court orders, profiting directly off the presidency, and endlessly, relentlessly more.
The time has come to take the resistance to a new level. Everyone who is outraged, upset, scared, anxious, and sickened by Trump’s rapidly intensifying fascism must unite in coordinated mass resistance. If we do not rise up in unprecedented, unified, coordinated resistance now, it will very soon be too late. If you are outraged and sickened by what this administration is doing, do not wait—the longer we wait, the worse and more irreversible Trump’s fascism will be.
The next mass protest action in Washington should be 1 million strong.
As I write this, a massive “We Are All DC” protest in Washington, DC could pave the way forward. A diverse, steadily growing, and loud crowd of many thousands took to the Capitol’s streets Saturday, marching near the White House and other sites of power, with shouts of “Shut it down” and “Trump must go now.” On October 18, an array of groups will hold a nationally coordinated “No Kings” protest. The last “No Kings Day” drew record crowds and marked a potential turning point in the growing movement against Trump’s fascism and bigotry.
The anti-Trump resistance movement is steadily growing and congealing. The question now is, when and how will this burgeoning uprising go beyond protests and mobilize coordinated actions that create concrete impacts? When do we coordinate a national General Strike, or similar effort that shuts things down for a time? When will we all go to Washington, DC and simply sit down, sit in, refuse to leave, and prevent this fascist administration from creating further harm?
Actions like these must be done thoughtfully, carefully, and strategically. This is not a time for whimsy or flippancy. We must create real infrastructure, systems of solidarity, support, and mutual aid, to sustain nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience, including a General Strike. Such efforts must include organized labor and other diverse major movements.
This is not a criticism of the current protests—I have been to and supported all the marches I can muster, while supporting online, signing petitions, and making phone calls daily; this is an urging in solidarity. Now is the time for a new level of national mobilization and resistance action that goes beyond marches and rallies.
Building on Saturday’s inspiring turnout in DC, we need to coordinate and organize a truly massive, nationwide “STOP FASCISM NOW” protest in Washington—one that people can plan for and that unites and coordinates the many uprisings across the country. The next mass protest action in Washington should be 1 million strong. Yes, 1 million.
It’s time to aim higher and dig deeper. All of us. The time to UNITE, COORDINATE, and MOBILIZE a MILLION people in DC is NOW. Of course, many can’t make the trip, and cities across the nation will continue their own protests—but mobilizing 1 million people in DC for a national day (or week) of action and, potentially, a General Strike Against Fascism, would be dramatic, powerful, and impactful.
One million against fascism and for democracy, diversity, love, solidarity, and a future that is equitable, inclusive, and sustainable. One million against fascism and for our shared futures.
Maybe we call it simply: The National Mobilization Against Fascism. The General Strike Against Fascism.
It’s time to imagine it, build it, and make it happen. Our country, our communities, and our future are on the line, and there is truly no time to lose. The time is now.
What should or can we all do next? And beyond stopping or toppling Trump, what is the larger goal and vision?
The June 14 “No Kings Day” outpouring was truly historic. An estimated 5 million people (some estimates from organizers run closer to 10 million) flooded the streets in more than 2,100 cities and towns across the nation, peacefully expressing their outrage at President Donald Trump’s unrelenting assaults on immigrants, democracy, the Constitution, science, diversity, government services, and more.
To paraphrase the target of this uprising, we’ve rarely seen anything like this. “No Kings Day” protests, taking place in all 50 states, including massive crowds in Red states, may well be America’s biggest single day of protest against a U.S. president and his policies. (By some accounts, “No Kings Day” ranks third among all U.S. protests for a single-day turnout.)
Throughout the next day, the internet was wallpapered with photographs of huge red-state crowds, everywhere: Sugarland, Texas. Blount County, Tennessee. Omaha, Nebraska. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Jackson, Mississippi. Indianapolis, Indiana. Birmingham, Alabama. Everywhere.
This country will need more direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience, in far greater numbers, to stop or slow Trump’s grotesquely harmful and destructive agenda.
This immense upwelling provided a thunderous rebuke of Trump’s fascistic conjoining of his birthday and the U.S. Army’s military parade, replete with tanks rolling through the nation’s capital, an autocratic-style show of force. It was also a mammoth repudiation of Trump’s fascistic, Constitution-defying deployment of the Marines and the California National Guard to quell protests in Los Angeles.
If anyone doubts Trump’s push toward autocracy, consider his comments warning against any “No Kings” protests in Washington, D. C. during his military parade:
“We’re going to celebrate big on Saturday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office right after he spoke about sending the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests there. “If any protesters want to come out, they will be met with very big force.”
Veterans decried Trump’s threats as contradicting the very principles soldiers are told to defend. Michael T. McPhearson, a veteran and director of Veterans for Peace and a protest organizer, told media, “President Trump threatened Americans coming to exercise their first amendment rights would be met with ‘great force’. We are the actual people who put uniforms on because we believe in the freedoms this country is supposed to be about, and we will not be intimidated into silence.”
There is no telling what’s next, but “No Kings” seems poised to be an important turning point in the rising nationwide resistance to Trump. While awe-inspiring protests in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco exceeded expectations, even more portentous were the jam-packed streets and squares of red-state cities and towns.
These protests were no doubt fertilized by the “Against Oligarchy” tour of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who drew vast crowds of Americans fed up with Trump’s agenda of enriching the rich while scapegoating immigrants and poor people.
Robert Reich encapsulated the absurd contradictions neatly, writing: “Trump threw himself a $45M military parade birthday bash while trying to pass the biggest healthcare and SNAP cuts in history—all to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. This is what oligarchy looks like.”
With the growing red-state upwellings, Republican politicians must now take notice, as growing portions of their own voters are displeased with Trump’s chaotic and autocratic ways. Any loosening or erosion of Trump’s tenuous hold over Congress could throw wrenches in his agenda by peeling away votes.
How do we build on this potent “Kings Day” momentum? What should or can we all do next? And beyond stopping or toppling Trump, what is the larger goal and vision?
The answers are still evolving. But coalitions are congealing, more and more Americans are rising up, and in addition to outrage there is an unmistakable politics of love and solidarity at the protests—from mutual aid to various expressions of a progressive patriotism, to desperately clarion calls for love over hatred and division.
Still, amid the excitement and inspiration, we must continue asking: What happens the day after the protest? Where is it all going, and how can we harness and organize this tremendous rising energy and impassioned concern? The Democrats remain adrift and often bizarrely bereft and still don’t show much clarity or momentum beyond their fairly unified opposition to Trump. Democrats’ poll numbers remain dreary, and despite the skyrocketing rage about Trump and his policies, their midterms prospects range from dubious to unclear.
“No Kings Day” was historic and could be a turning point in the proliferating resistance to Trump’s fascism and bigotry. In the view of many, including this writer, it is time to start organizing toward a truly effective General Strike, or at least a less-universal yet still huge “generalized strike” that can still have significant impact. There have been various random calls for this on social media, of course, but they haven’t been organized or well-thought-out. A real General Strike or generalized strike must involve major labor unions, supported and amplified by the many social and political movements arrayed against this regime.
There is a great deal to say about the history, strategies, and organizing of general strikes. The idea can’t be taken blithely and must be planned and coordinated over months to have a shot at being effective. There are ways to shut down ‘business as usual’ while maintaining critical, life-preserving services and public safety. A mass social strike involving at least large portions of organized labor can make a powerful statement about not only our numbers but our commitment to stopping Trump.
Trump’s fascistic crackdowns are growing more intense, horrifying, and horrendous by the day and week. Several major political opponents have now been either arrested or attacked. We saw Sen. Alex Padilla’s (D-Calif.) violent removal by Homeland Security agents for simply shouting questions at a press conference; before that, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) were arrested for attempting to inspect an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility; and on Tuesday, Trump’s ICE (including some wearing face masks, according to reports) arrested and detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. The country will need more mass actions that, while peaceful and nonviolent, go beyond protest. Things will likely get worse in coming days, weeks, and months.
This country will need more direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience, in far greater numbers, to stop or slow Trump’s grotesquely harmful and destructive agenda.
With “No Kings Day,” the resistance movements have arrived. We many millions rained on Trump’s little, failed military parade (photos showed Trump watching glumly across from empty bleachers, and he reportedly reamed out Defense Secretary Hegseth for the dismal event).
What we do now and next with this tremendous groundswell of outrage, concern, and love, is up to all of us. And as Trump’s fascistic flailing intensifies, we will truly need all of us. No Kings. Just we, the people.