Who are Eugenia Roccella’s protesters? Yesterday, May 9, the Family Minister of the Meloni government abandoned the General States of Birth after signs had been raised at the beginning of her speech. Then the choirs. The protesters are activists from student collectives such as the Transfeminist Collective, the Aracne Assembly and the Artemis Collective. Roccella spoke of “censorship” against her and received the solidarity of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. While some students threw water at the protesters. Who have criticized the government for policies “that put the right to abortion at risk” and who want “the ultimate goal of women” to be “motherhood”.
Transfeminist Collective and Aracne Assembly
The Artemisia collective had announced the protest on Instagram: a first meeting on the event on March 25th. Then the announcement of the protest: «See you all together to discuss the “General States of Motherhood” conference announced by Minister Valditara», the activists wrote. Yesterday the organizer Gigi De Palo denied it: «It is an initiative of the Birth Foundation. Which has nothing to do with Pro Vita either.” The Aracne collective takes its name from the Greek myth of the girl transformed into a spider. It is a Roman transfeminist student assembly. “We are not reproduction machines but bodies fighting for the revolution,” they wrote on social media. When Roccella said “thank you all” at the beginning of her speech, the protest started with signs: “I decide about my body.”
The student Caterina
Repubblica interviews the student Caterina today, who is part of Aracne. «Censorship is something else, ours is protest, dissent. The basis of any democratic society”, she explains. «Ours was only a strong action to disrupt the absurd statements on abortion and homo-parental families», she adds. Then explaining that on stage they wanted to say «that we contest the idea that this government has children, seen as human, social and working capital. The idea that women are reproduction machines and that our greatest aspiration is to become mothers. Being pushed, as young people, to have children as there is a demographic decline. Without, among other things, dealing with the economic and social conditions in which we would do them. It is a denial of free choice.”
