SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
rome
Italy's Unions Lead General Strike for Gaza
"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.
Sep 22, 2025
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)
[image or embed]
— 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)
[image or embed]
— 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."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rome Summit Takes Bold Step Toward Agroecology
Leaders endorse agroecology as one of the cutting-edge innovations we need to help small-scale farmers adapt to climate change.
Oct 24, 2019
The Climate Action Summit at the UN last month was widely considered a disappointment, failing to garner the kinds of government actions needed to address the climate crisis. Sadly, the same can be said for actions on agriculture and climate change, despite a well-publicized commitment of $790 million to "to enhance resilience of over 300 million small-scale food producers in the face of mounting climate impacts."
That is not because the investment isn't needed. It is, desperately. Small-scale farmers in developing countries are already bearing the brunt of climate change yet they have received little of the promised funding to help them adapt to drought, flooding, heat, and other climate changes.
These new initiatives won't bridge that gap. Just as government actions to date are proving far too weak to address the climate emergency, these agriculture programs support familiar measures that have thus far failed to help small-scale farmers. Some measures have left them even more vulnerable to climate change.
Many recognized that business as usual, in the face of climate change, is not an option. They moved beyond the failed policies of the present, endorsing agroecology as the kind of innovation farmers need to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. We need a more decisive shift. Fortunately, government leaders took a major step in that direction gather in Rome next last week at for a different summit, the annual meetings of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). They will be discussing approved an expert report on agroecology, an innovative and cost-effective way a more promising innovation to address rising hunger and malnutrition while helping farmers adapt to climate change. A host of recent UN reports calls for just this sort of break.
"Agroecology is the only solution we have to address the multiple crises we are facing," said Aisha Ali Aii Shatou of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa to the government representatives at the summit.
When the solutions are part of the problem
The new $790-million agriculture initiative is driven by recommendations from the Global Commission on Adaptation (CGA), which is co-chaired by Bill Gates, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva. Its report, "Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience," has as one of its core initiatives enhancing the resilience of smallholder producers.
Unfortunately, the Commission largely doubles down on the misguided effort to "modernize" agriculture in developing countries by encouraging farmers to adopt precisely the sorts of fossil-fuel-intensive practices that have made agriculture one of the greatest contributors to global greenhouse-gas emissions. As I saw in researching my book, Eating Tomorrow, crop diversity and soil fertility often decline as a result.
In its recommendations, the commission includes agroecology only as an afterthought, warning that we need to improve "the evidence-base for the effectiveness of adopting different agroecological approaches" - as if we don't know enough yet to act.
They clearly hadn't read the new expert report on agroecology and other innovations for sustainable food systems, released July 3 by the CFS's High Level Panel of Experts. The expert report, two years in the making, is clear on the urgent need for change. "Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed," the summary begins. It goes on to present a wide range of evidence that such methods have been shown to simultaneously increase soil fertility, diet diversity, and food security for small-scale farmers.
Agroecology promotes just the kinds of soil-building practices that "agricultural modernization" often undermines. Multiple food crops are grown in the same field. Compost and manure, not fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, are used to fertilize fields. Biological pest control decreases pesticide use. Researchers work with farmers to improve the productivity of their seeds rather than replacing them with commercial seeds farmers need to buy every year and douse with fertilizer to make them grow. As the expert report documents, soil fertility increases over time, and so do food security and climate resilience.
Agroecology: a proven response to the failing policies of the present
The growing global interest in agroecology comes in response to the widespread failures of input-intensive programs like the Gates-inspired Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Fed by heavy doses of government subsidies for commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers, AGRA has promoted monocultures of a few staple crops, decreased crop and diet diversity, undermined soil fertility, and produced disappointing gains in productivity and farmer incomes. Global Hunger Index scores remained in the "serious" to "alarming" category for 12 of the 13 AGRA countries.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its influential report on "Climate Change and Land," echoed the urgent need for change and the direction that change should take: "[I]ncreasing the resilience of the food system through agroecology and diversification is an effective way to achieve climate change adaptation...."
Fortunately, in Rome government leaders were forward-looking. Many recognized that business as usual, in the face of climate change, is not an option. They moved beyond the failed policies of the present, endorsing agroecology as the kind of innovation farmers need to adapt to a rapidly changing climate.
As African farmer Aisha Ali Aii Shatou told the summit, "Agroecology allows small-scale producers a dignified life, producing affordable, healthy food in healthy conditions. It eliminates dependence on costly inputs and adopts practices which regenerate seeds and soils while mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change."
The CFS next year will take up the challenge of translating this visionary report into practical policies.
Author attended the UN's Committee on World Food Security summit in Rome October 14-18 as a civil society delegate.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Thousands of Italian Women March Across Country. Demand: 'My Body, My Choice'
'40 years on from the passing of Law 194, there is still a long road ahead of us'
May 26, 2018
Thousands of women marched across Italy on Saturday afternoon to mark the anniversary of Italy's 194 Law, which passed in 1978 and legalized abortion in the country.
Marchers fear that the far-right, anti-European Union, anti-immigrant League, which contains many anti-choice militants, will soon threaten the 194 Law. The League stands on the brink of forming a government with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement following the general elections in March.
Saturday's mobilization was organized by 'Obiezione Respinta' (Rejected Objection) and the 'Non una di meno' (Not one less) movement.
"Italian women's battles over the last four decades show that any abortion law has to be founded on women's freedom of choice -- or it won't work," Michela Pusterla, an Italian feminist involved in the Non una di meno movement, wrote Friday in Jacobin. " In Italy and elsewhere, as fascist and sexist anti-choice movements grow their presence in Parliaments and public hospitals, the fight for reproductive rights becomes larger than itself. It becomes a global fight for liberation; for another society based on autonomy and self-determination."
The anti-abortion movement is strong in Italy, due in part to the strong influence of the Catholic Church.
Under Law 194, women have the right to an abortion in the first 90 days of pregnancy due to health, economic, social or family reasons, while between the 12th and 20th week, either a significant fetal abnormality must be present, posing a serious risk to the woman's mental or physical health, or there must be a danger to the woman's life if she continues with the pregnancy.
The law includes a recognition of the "social value of motherhood," and allows medical professionals to refuse to carry out abortions on the grounds of conscientious objection. According to the Italian health minister, just over 70 percent of gynecologists in Italy refuse to carry out the procedure. Campaigners say that the increased difficulty in accessing abortion is pushing more and more women to illegal, unsafe abortions or to travel abroad for the procedure.
Italy has been criticized by both the Council of Europe and the UN for the serious obstacles to accessing safe abortion.
Former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and former EU Commissioner Emma Bonino was at the forefront of bringing about the enactment of Law 194. Bonino called on Italian women not to "take their rights for granted," speaking on the 40th anniversary of the law she helped introduce. "40 years on from the passing of Legge 194, there is still a long road ahead of us," she said.
\u201cBologna in piazza #MoltoPiuDi194 @nonunadimeno\u201d— Favolosa Coalizione (@Favolosa Coalizione) 1527354698
\u201c#26maggio data che ricorderemo per lo storico del referendum irlandese: la libert\u00e0 delle donne vince! Anche noi oggi in piazza perch\u00e9 vogliamo #moltopiudi194, libera scelta sui nostri corpi! A decidere sono i corpi delle donne! A decidere sono i corpi delle soggettivit\u00e0 lgbitqi+!\u201d— NonUnaDiMeno (@NonUnaDiMeno) 1527350366
\u201cThis is a powerful moment for Ireland and for empowerment and struggle for sexual self-determination associated with reproductive rights, healthcare and healthy relationships. #Repealthe8h #IrelandReferendum\n https://t.co/jtQNUWUesI\u201d— Emma Bonino (@Emma Bonino) 1527355488
\u201c@Amitegbert @egbertconrad The new italian fascist government wants to make abortions illegal again....the medieval times are rising..\n\n#RepealThe8th #VoteYes #legge194 #save194\u201d— Gio (@Gio) 1527185222
\u201cMy body my choice #moltopi\u00f9di194 #nonunadimeno\u201d— en_abyme (@en_abyme) 1527352953
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular