Commentary
Palestine is the name of our discontent
The indignation, protest and anger at the massacre of the Palestinian people is fueled by years of oppression, repression and the deterioration of material conditions.
The general strike on September 22 is different. First of all, because it’s a Monday. We’ve heard a thousand times, especially from Matteo “I will limit every single strike” Salvini – that strikes always fall on a Friday so workers can “have a long weekend.” Obviously, that isn’t true, not least because the lost pay would make it unaffordable to go on a weekend getaway, but the economic impact of a strike called at the start of the week is certainly different, and greater.
Second, there is the reason for the strike. What is happening in Gaza belongs to the realm of the inhuman, and yet it was predictable from the very start – predictable not in its outcome, but in the ferocity, determination and barbarity with which Israel is carrying out the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Third, because unexpectedly, just when our world seemed to have grown accustomed to even this horror, there has been a reawakening. The demonstrations for Palestine never stopped, this summer as before – but at a certain point we began to witness a sharp rise in participation. We also began to see people out in the streets who were clearly not “accustomed” to expressing their dissent in this way: in short, people who look nothing like the bogeyman of “professional protesters” brandished by the far-right government in Italy and elsewhere.
This growing wave of dissent, of “enough is enough,” has found a moment to crystallize in the September 22 strike, which was commendably and promptly called by the USB and most other grassroots unions.
As the days have passed, we have seen more and more workers become engaged and publicly declare that they will be there. The largest public sector – the school system – has lit up with a plethora of motions, collective statements and moments of silence in opposition to the genocide. And this is certainly not the most combative labour sector in Italy.
Palestine has become the archetypal name for violence, oppression and extermination. But it seems to us that it is also, at the same time, the expression of an anger and discontent whose causes go beyond the sacrosanct human solidarity with Gaza. They are rooted in precarious lives, the erosion of rights, the downward slide on the social ladder, and so much more.
The indignation, protest and anger at the massacre of the Palestinian people is fueled by years of oppression, repression and the deterioration of material conditions. For the youngest, above all, there is also the lack of a future, the fear, the awareness of living in social and political settings in which the only ones who have a say are the horrifically rich and powerful.
In short, Palestine is the name for our discontent.
Faced with this reality, we can seize the opportunity to make a real qualitative leap. All those who are sincerely and genuinely outraged by the ongoing genocide can converge on the 22nd and turn this day into a turning point: for the fate of the Palestinian people – forcing the hand of a government that persists in its full complicity with Israel – and for the fate of our own people in our own country. It can be a chance to win back millions of disheartened and disillusioned people to political participation, to set an example that through struggle, we can change things and we can win.
Anything is still possible. It would have been an impressive signal if, for example, Italy’s largest trade union confederation, the CGIL, had decided to endorse this date for a strike instead of calling for scattered, patchwork strikes from one day to the next.
That did not happen, and we can’t turn back time. But we believe it is a sign of the times – or rather, a sign of the inability of certain leadership groups to understand the times, who perhaps have not yet realized that the times are changing.
We are convinced that Monday will not just be “a general strike”; it will be much more. That is why we are investing all our energy into this day, and we will continue to do so afterward: creating networks, mobilizing energies, and holding firm in our opposition to the genocide in Palestine, to the criminal Israeli state and its Western allies, and to those who are pushing us into hunger and poverty in order to buy weapons and other instruments of death.
Stop the genocide of the Palestinian people! Let’s shut everything down!
Giuliano Granato is a spokesperson for Potere al Popolo.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/palestina-e-il-nome-del-nostro-scontento on 2025-09-21