Appointment at 8 on Thursday morning. Porta San Paolo, symbol of the Roman resistance against Nazi-fascism, divided in two: barriers and barriers to separate the Jewish Brigade and antagonistic pro-Palestine movements. In the middle there was also a large group of policemen and carabinieri. The wait for the celebrations of April 25th is increasingly tense. Not only in the capital where there will be over 600 law enforcement personnel involved in the security of two marches, one of the ANPI and the other of the “April 25th Committee”, but above all in preventing contacts between the representation of the Jewish community, who will lay a wreath in memory of those who died for the Liberation, and the pro-Gaza groups organizing the “anti-fascist and anti-Zionist” demonstration.
The risk of anarchists
Maximum attention also on the initiative of the National Partisans Association: the procession will arrive shortly after 10am again at Porta San Paolo and then there will be speeches from the stage. The program includes that of Roberto Salis, Ilaria’s father, detained in Hungary where she is accused of having participated in the attack on two skin Nazis. Perhaps listening to him were also groups of anarchists who in the name of their daughter clashed with the police in Rome outside the Hungarian embassy in February and who on Tuesday night devastated the streets of the Appio-Claudio neighbourhood: cars and bins set on fire, pickaxes on two banks and a post office. In the capital as elsewhere, from Bologna to Naples, far-right circles are being monitored, as are any initiatives against Israel and acts of anti-Semitism.
Bring attention to the conflict in Gaza
In Milan the hot front will always be the pro-Palestine protest. The Police Headquarters will have to manage an unprecedented advance garrison organized by young Palestinians and by some organizations from the social centers in Piazza Duomo. The same place where guests and institutions will speak from the stage. From mayor Beppe Sala to the national president of Anpi Gianfranco Pagliarulo, to the actor and director Pif, up to the possible intervention of the writer Antonio Scurati fresh from the controversy over “censorship” in Rai. Other militants in the procession with the social centers of the opposing area: the objective, not hidden, is to catalyze the attention of the national procession to shift it to the conflict in Gaza and the “genocide committed by the Israeli army”.
Right to demonstrate but without deviations
An issue on which there has already been a fracture in Milan in the ANPI and in part of the left. In the square there will be the dem secretary Elly Schlein and Nicola Fratoianni (Avs) and also the Jewish Brigade (Carlo Calenda and Benedetto Della Vedova will march with them), but not the banner of the Community, after President Walker Meghnagi’s decision not to participate in protest against attacks by supporters of the Palestinian cause. At the Police Headquarters we have been working for weeks on a discreet but impressive safety plan to avoid exploitation and dangerous skids of the procession. The line of the Interior Ministry and of the commissioner Giuseppe Petronzi is clear: everyone will be guaranteed the right to demonstrate, but without deviations.
