Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Florence: 500,000 march today against the war

Martin Thomas, in Florence | 09.11.2002 23:52

The protest was called as part of the European Social Forum, held here from 7 to 10 November, but the great majority of the demonstrators were Italian. Contingents started to assemble at 11am, four hours before the scheduled start of the march. The crowd was far too big to fit into the scheduled finishing area. Marchers filled the streets for miles around. As I write, it is 8pm, and the streets of the city are still full of demonstrators making their way home.

It is hard to get an overview of a demonstration of such size. There were large contingents from the most militant of Italy's big trade union federations, CGIL, and hundreds of thousands of young people. I never got anywhere near the head of the demonstration to check on this, but it was due to be led by a contingent of Fiat car workers, who are currently organisingst rikes against 8000 planned job cuts.

On the march as at the European Social Forum itself, there seemed to be as many young women as young men.
The message of the demonstration was simple and clear: No war. Politically it was dominated by the red flags and
banners of Rifondazione, the Party of Communist Refoundation. There were many other groups, of course. Some demonstrators came from the youth wing of the Democratic Left - what was the majority of the old Communist Party - but none from the DL itself that I could see. I saw a contingent with a big banner, "With Iraq, against imperialism", but only a dozen or so people behind it.

Songs - Bandiera Rossa, the Internationale, and others - dominated the demonstration, rather than chants.
Banners and placards denounced the Berlusconi government and its attacks on workers' rights. Many demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and wore keffiyehs to show solidarity with the Palestinians, but I saw none of the sour, calculating "hate Israel" agitation common on the British left.

I came across a joint Palestinian-Jewish contingent. The "Two Nations, Two States" pamphlets I was carrying were welcomed. I talked to a young Italian Jewish woman, a lapsed member of Rifondazione, now studying in London, who had returned to Florence for the Social Forum and to see her family. Yes, she had been on the anti-war demonstration in London. Yes, she had seen the "Keep Palestine Tidy" stickers, showing a Star of David being binned, and been sickened by them. In Italy it is different.

"Third-Worldism" and populism of various sorts are common enough on the Italian left. Flags carrying the image of Che Guevara were common on the demonstration. But this is a generous populism, an enthusiastic identification with struggle, not a curdled chauvinism.

The Italian left does not have the same culture of paper-selling as the British or even the French. Although Rifondazione flags dominated the march, I saw not a single person selling their daily paper Liberazione. At the point where we set up our Workers' Liberty stall - though not elsewhere on the demonstration - there was a concentration of paper-sellers from Socialismo Rivoluzionario, ex-Trotskyists who are, I believe, the largest revolutionary group in Italy outside Rifondazione. Aside from that, hardly anything.

Florence, 9 November

Martin Thomas, in Florence
- e-mail: martin@workersliberty.org
- Homepage: http://www.workersliberty.org.uk

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. more than this — irish man abroad
  2. Who else from Europe — Euro fan
  3. Firenze and London, contrasts & similarities — Re-Sista
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech