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Thousands Take to Milan Streets to Protest Olympics' Environmental and Social Harms, ICE
"I’m here because these Olympics are unsustainable—economically, socially, and environmentally," said one elderly protester.
Feb 08, 2026
Around 10,000 demonstrators rallied in Milan Saturday to protest the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the games, genocidal Israel's participation, and other issues.
The union and activist network Comitato Insostenibili Olimpiadi, or Unsustainable Olympics Committee, organized the demonstration, which it called "a popular gathering of social opposition, bringing together grassroots and community sports organizations, civic and environmental movements, territorial committees and student collectives."
The coalition said it is "fighting for the right to housing and for militant trade unions, movements that have stood alongside the Palestinian people, and the Global Sumud Flotilla," the seaborne campaign to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.
Protesters also decried Decree Law 1660, which empowers police to preemptively detain people for up to 12 hours if they believe they may act disruptively, as well as "state racism against migrants and racialized people, and transfeminist anger against social and institutional patriarchy."
At the vanguard of the protest march were about 50 people carrying cardboard trees representing larches they said were cut down to construct the new bobsleigh track in Cortina d'Ampezzo. They held a banner reading, "Century-old trees, survivors of two wars, sacrificed for 90 seconds of competition on a bobsleigh track costing €124 million."
Stefano Nutini, a 71-year-old protester, told Reuters that "I’m here because these Olympics are unsustainable—economically, socially, and environmentally."
"These Olympic Games are against nature and against people." Thousands of people marched through Milan to protest housing costs and urban affordability on the first day of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. pic.twitter.com/iPcpXwuvQN
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) February 7, 2026
One healthcare worker at the protest told Euronews: "It's public money that has been spent on a display window. It may be interesting to have these showcase events, but at a time when there is not enough money for essential things, it makes no sense to spend it in this way."
Another demonstrator said that the Olympics "have not brought any wealth to the city of Milan and Lombardy."
"They have taken money away from social welfare, public schools, and healthcare," he added. "This money has literally been burned, and not a single lira will go to Italian citizens, particularly those in Lombardy, so these are bogus Olympics."
Other demonstrators held signs reading "ICE Out" to protest US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's presence in Italy to provide security support for American athletes and officials. The agency is at the center of the Trump administration's deadly crackdown on unauthorized immigrants and their defenders in the US. On Friday, hundreds of protesters also rallied against ICE in Milan.
The protests took place as US Vice President JD Vance was in Milan as head of his country's Olympic delegation. Vance was loudly booed at Friday's opening ceremony in San Siro stadium.
While Saturday's demonstration was mostly peaceful, a small breakaway group reportedly threw firecrackers and other objects at police, who responded with brutal force, firing a water cannon, deploying chemical agents, and beating protesters with batons. A young woman suffered a head injury and a young man's arm was broken, according to il Manifesto, which reported six arrests.
Further afield, railway infrastructure was reportedly sabotaged around Bologna in Emilia-Romagna and Pesaro in coastal Marche.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni—whose right-wing government was a common subject of protesters' ire—condemned the demonstration and voiced "solidarity... with the police, the city of Milan, and all those who will see their work undermined by these gangs of criminals."
More anti-Olympics protests were set to take place in Milan on Sunday.
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Sanders Probes Trump's Corporate Welfare as Walmart Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap
"Do the right thing: Get off of corporate welfare and pay all of your workers a living wage with good benefits," the democratic socialist senator implored Walmart's multibillionaire owners.
Feb 05, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday launched an investigation into how corporations including Walmart—which hit $1 trillion in market value earlier this week—benefit from tax breaks in Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act while many of their workers can't make ends meet.
Sanders (I-Vt.) informed Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon and the heads of Kroger, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree in separate letters that he's probing how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed by the GOP-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last year "has negatively impacted the health and well-being of workers at large corporations... and how it has financially benefited the owners and executives of these multinational conglomerates."
"This legislation made the largest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history to pay for $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% and over $900 billion in tax cuts to large corporations," noted Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
"As you know, Walmart is the largest corporation in America with over $680 billion in revenue, $19.4 billion in profits, and more than 2 million workers," Sanders wrote in his letter to McMillon. "Walmart also recently became the first retailer ever to hit $1 trillion in market value. It is owned by one of the wealthiest families in America, the Walton family, which has become over $348 billion richer since 2017 and is now worth more than half a trillion dollars."
"Yet, despite the enormous wealth of the Walton family and these huge corporate profits, Walmart pays wages so low that many of its workers rely on public assistance to survive," the senator said. "At Walmart, tens of thousands of low-wage workers are forced to depend on SNAP to feed their families and Medicaid to get the healthcare they need—all paid for by US taxpayers."
"Walmart pays wages so low that many of its workers rely on public assistance to survive."
Sanders is asking the heads of the companies in his probe to "disclose how much they expect to make from the Republicans’ tax breaks and whether any of these savings will be passed along to workers."
“It has never been acceptable that incredibly profitable companies like Walmart—owned by one of the richest families on Earth—pay their workers starvation wages, forcing many of them to rely on programs like Medicaid and SNAP," Sanders wrote to McMillon. "But it is even more unacceptable when those benefits are being slashed so that corporate executives and billionaires like the Walton family can become even richer.”
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Rent Control Is the American Way
Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way.
Feb 01, 2026
The real estate industry doesn’t want you to know an important fact about rent control: Since World War I, rent regulations have protected poor and middle- and working-class tenants against skyrocketing rents and predatory landlords. Rent control, in other words, has long been a part of the American way.
Soon after World War I, elected officials understood that they needed to protect tenants against sky-high rents due to a worsening housing shortage. Fair rent committees, with an emphasis on “fair,” were set up in 153 cities in the United States, and those committees routinely reached out to landlords to stop unreasonable rent hikes. In Washington D.C. and Denver, rent commissions determined fair rents, and, in New York, state legislators passed emergency laws to control sky-high rising rents.
Politicians knew that they couldn’t allow the status quo of unfair rents to continue, and they knew that they had the power to do something about it. So they stepped in to help hard-working Americans.
During World War II, politicians again did the right thing and expanded rent control. The federal government established rent control for around 80 percent of rental housing in the U.S. in response to housing shortages and rent gouging. When that federal program was phased out, some states, such as New York and New Jersey, established their own rent control policies in the early 1950s.
If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire.
Throughout this period, elected officials understood that tenants needed stable, affordable housing that would not force renters to choose between eating or paying the rent or paying medical bills or paying the rent. Americans’ well-being was at stake.
Fast forward to the early 1970s. With worsening inflation, rents spiked. President Richard Nixon pushed for temporary rent controls, and that was followed by American cities passing rent regulations, including Berkeley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, in the 1980s and 1990s, the deep-pocketed real estate industry pushed back, aggressively lobbying state legislatures across the country to pass rent control bans or restrictions. Landlords and lobbyists went against the American way of looking out for people.
Today, more than 35 states have laws that stop the expansion of rent control while the real estate industry’s profits, through unfair, excessive rents, go through the roof. Between 2010 and 2019, renters paid a staggering $4.5 trillion to landlords in the U.S, according to Zillow.
Recently, Big Tech and Big Real Estate teamed up to charge wildly inflated rents through a rent-fixing software program by RealPage, which brought about numerous lawsuits and investigations. The software allowed corporate landlords to collude and charge outrageous rents that harmed Americans throughout the nation.
If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire. Eviction Lab, the prestigious research institute at Princeton University, found that increasingly unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. And a wide-ranging study on homelessness by the University of California San Francisco revealed that people ended up living on the streets because of sky-high rents. An urgent way to address these life-threatening problems is to utilize rent control—an American tradition since World War I.
But activists believe that rent control isn’t the only tool to fix the housing affordability and homelessness crises. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach called the “3 Ps”: protect tenants through rent control and other renter protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for unaffordable luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing.
Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way. Today’s elected officials must continue that work, especially since tenants throughout the country are facing serious risks of death and homelessness. They must immediately utilize rent regulations and the 3 Ps.
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