Check out the highly creative and effective student protests in Italy this last week. Not content with occupying their universities and colleges and taking it to the streets, as is traditional now in Italy, students occupy key economic interests such as an airport, bridges into a city, train stations and now major tourist sites: The Coliseum in Rome and The Leaning Tower in Pisa. The point is not to just stay in the spaces of learning (which in some cases can be fairly invisible to others) but to take back other public spaces for occupation and debate and mass political effect.

The occupations here are great and just the start but we could begin to think just a bit wider about creating new occupied spaces of protest, discussion, assembly and ultimately direct action against the cuts and Government. When we take such spaces we are also inviting others who are fighting the cuts to take the space with us and to all work together.

Good round-up of Italian struggles here:
 http://www.uniriot.org/uniriotII/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2161:stop-the-country-take-back-the-future&catid=132:euniriot&Itemid=324

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