​​Fridays for Future return to the streets: ‘We are still resisting’

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It has been more than six years since Fridays for Future first took over the streets around the world, including Italy, on March 15, 2019. Dozens of strikes later, the demonstrations made a comeback on Friday as the global upheavals that swept the planet since that first Friday have reshaped the political agenda. 

“The overarching framework of the present day is the imposition of a war economy,” wrote the activists in their statement calling for the mobilization, listing the key points on the agenda: no to rearmament, an energy transition planned from the grassroots, a stop to repression and to land consumption.

“There is no doubt that we are at a turning point for the movement. The current social issues are leading us to a rethinking as well, to connect the global and the local more and more,” explains Marzio Chirico, national representative of Fridays for Future for Italy. 

First the pandemic and then the war have pushed the ecological transition to the bottom of policymakers' agendas – a condition it had only managed to emerge from rarely and with great difficulty – as well as in the public debate: “For a moment, the environment was always on the front page in the debate, but it has slowly slipped out of sight until it almost vanished. That is why we are still demonstrating, to show that we are resisting and that we need to get back to dealing with it,” Chirico stresses.

Manifestations took place all over Italy, each with its own local specific focus within the broader framework of climate justice. As the activists explained together with the GKN workers in Campi Bisenzio, on the eve of the demonstrations: “The convergence lies in the causes of the catastrophe.” 

“The issue has certainly lost popularity and media appeal, but extreme weather phenomena are increasing and continuing to affect people's lives, while ultra-right-wing governments are making everything worse,” says Letizia De Simone from the Rome chapter of Fridays. In Rome, the movement chose to focus on a down-to-earth target for their environmental demands, promoting a campaign against land consumption, which is likely to worsen with the new implementing rules to the land-use plan and the construction of AS Roma's stadium in Pietralata Park, northeast of the capital.

The activists focused on a diverse range of local fights across the country: from the ILVA demonstration in Taranto to the cementing of the Cibali Park in Catania and the new Pedemontana highway between Milan and Brianza. In Turin, the FIOM CGIL union also took part in the march: “In the fight we are waging for the renewal of the collective contract, there is also the idea of fair, equitable and sustainable development, which are your watchwords,” Edi Lazzi, secretary of the Turin FIOM, told the marchers, speaking in front of the headquarters of the Union of Industrialists. 

The march then passed in front of banking giant Intesa Sanpaolo's skyscraper, where activists from Extinction Rebellion dyed themselves in oil-black paint and crawled up to the front of the entrance: “We are being oppressed and drowned,” they shouted, protesting against the banking group's investments in the fossil industry.

On Saturday, the protests continued in Turin and Bologna. From Turin, the demonstration was set to move to Chieri, a few kilometers away, where the construction of a new section of ring road is planned, a project the activists are calling “anachronistic as well as environmentally devastating.” 

In Bologna, another Climate Pride was set to be staged, with the participation of dozens of NGOs, including Legambiente and Greenpeace, after the first time during the November COP29 in Rome.

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/fridays-for-future-in-piazza-resistiamo-per-il-clima on 2025-04-12