A week ago in Rome there was a demonstration which was really exceptional, with students and researchers from outside of Rome also. At the same time there were significant protests in cities all over the country. This time the demonstration in Rome was strictly local, and I didn’t see any posters or flyers about it. Still it was quite huge. The newspaper La Repubblica says “at least 25.000″, Global Project says “30.000″. There were three or more parades, which early in the morning started from different places and then joined together at Piazza della Repubblica around 11-12. The route the joint parade took was basically P. Repubblica - P. Venezia - Trastevere - Piramide - Sapienza.

The most dramatic moment took place towards the end of the demonstration at the Station of Ostiense. The students tried to occupy the station. When people ran towards the gates, the cops and guards charged immediately and started beating people with batons. They closed the gates and even after this, they charged one more time using their batons. Quite a few people got hit in their head. In the newspaper La Repubblica the police are quoted saying “There was no charge, instead they threw bottles on us”. This is the Italian police: 1) using violence without a warning, 2) lying that it never happened.

There were lots of high school students. One of the parades in the morning was lead by them. This parade came from Piazza Barberini, and in the front they had a banner saying “Against Gelmini, fascists and privatization. Secondary school students in mobilization”. I was told they had driven away a group of right-wingers of Azione Universitaria who tried to place themselves in the demo. Besides high school students, this parade included also the faculties of Sapienza which are located outside the main campus: art students, architecture students, sociology students.

It was a long day, I think we spent something like seven hours in the street, from 10.00 until 17.00. After the demo, there were still some assemblies at Sapienza, one of them at Political Sciences, about how to continue with the mobilisation until the next big day, 14 November 2008.

Lots of pictures:
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7264331@N04/sets/72157608760919909/

English language site about Student Rebellions:
 http://anomalia.blogsome.com/

Round-up of November 7th protests and occupations and police actions:
(In Italian but you can figure the basics out plus lots of pics and videos)
 http://www.globalproject.info/art-17716.html