Recent Wave of Italian Protests? Any news?

Will get some italian comrades to post something up. The Student movement is increasingly becoming a mass social movement, swelling the numbers of other campaigns. Just yesterday there were around 5,000 people, mainly young, who were mobilised in the space of a day after one of romes social centres were evicted - this after the fascist mayor declared a war on romes social centres and promised to evict them - wonder if he will also evict the fascist squat of casapound?

There is a general strike on November 14th as well - over 2 million workers participated in the last one with 500,000 (!) on the streets of Rome with around 10,000 strong student block occupying the Termini central station. Reports suggest that universities will be squatted - some already are - with many commentators suggesting parallels with the 1990 student "Pantera" movement where dozens of universities were occupied - some up to a year. With that movement it saw an upturn in political struggle which led to the massive proliferation of social centres in Italy and a strong street based movement. Italy has long been at the cutting edge of political social movements, embracing both popular culture, open source methodologies and an ability to leave 20th century ideological dogma behind. Lets hope that the recent domination of the italian far-right, both institutionally and street based, can be challenged again and open up a new cycle of struggle of progressive, libertarian conflict with capital and state instruments.

And remember 2009 is Italy G8 summit - the biggest antifascist mobilisation since the spanish civil war.