The protest over the high cost of living becomes guerrilla warfare, Milan a battlefield

They wanted to be demonstrations against the high cost of living, the cost of petrol and the tax burden. But they turned into guerrilla warfare: Milan reduced to a battlefield with Piazza Duomo besieged by hundreds of very young people dressed in black who forced the police to retreat under the throwing of paper bombs, barriers and bottles, until they occupied the symbolic square of the city. Clashes also occurred in Turin, Bologna and Bergamo, here too stone throwers and firecrackers were thrown at the police, here too very young people were hooded.

The government's reaction was immediate: "Demonstrating is a right - said Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni - but setting our cities on fire is not. I renew my request to the opposition: let them not be ambiguous on this. Any reticence becomes justification". The deputy prime ministers echoed her: "It is unacceptable - said Tajani - that part of the center-left is fanning the flames in an attempt to compensate for their lack of ideas and proposals". While for Matteo Salvini in the square there were "social centres, maranza and left-wing rottenness. Will there still be those who protect and defend them???".

The first to speak on the opposite side is the mayor of the most injured city, Giuseppe Sala: "The reasons for the protest were understandable. The violence against the police and the serious damage to the city are unjustifiable. Politics can decide to exploit it, in search of electoral consensus. Or to face this difficult historical moment wisely: I hope this is the choice". Stone throwing, paper bombs, charges, water cannons, tear gas and barricades have left behind a corollary, yet to be definitively accounted for, of arrests, complaints, damage and injuries. In Milan alone, at least four officers and 20 protesters were injured and over 50 young people were arrested. Half of them are minors.

According to the Police, the hundreds of angry young people - many of foreign origin but just as many very Italians - arrived self-organising from the suburbs, the hinterland but also from other provinces. Without coordination and in small groups. What is certain is that they took over the main demonstration, organized by Italia in the square to protest against the high cost of living and high fuel prices, setting the city on fire and first forcing the police to retreat while waiting for reinforcements, and then surrounding Piazza Duomo with around twenty 'cell phones' and jeeps from the furniture department. Scenes from war. And again in the evening a group surrounded a police car but was blocked and stopped.

In Turin the procession, which several citizens' committees had announced for days as 'apolitical and non-partisan', quickly came under the control of the antagonistic collectives, the social centers and the Pro Pal galaxy, with the participation of many teenagers from the suburbs. The organizers' attempts to get them to set aside their flags and convince them not to march in hoods were unsuccessful. One of them, Marco Liccione, former leader of the No Pass protests at the time of the pandemic, reports having been surrounded and beaten by about fifteen infiltrators.

In Bologna the clashes were concentrated in the station area, where a group of hooded kids broke away from the procession and started throwing smoke bombs, glass bottles, barriers and stones at the police who responded with water cannons and tear gas to disperse them. At the end of a day of guerrilla warfare, what remains are the wounded squares, the destroyed shop windows, the uprooted bar tables, the image of the bonfire in Piazza Duomo. And the damage still needs to be done.