The splendid photos by Giuseppe Faliva tell of the Cremonese sixty-eight, which was a year late for us. As always, Cremona arrives after the other cities.
The heart of the student protest here was in fact in 1969, 55 years ago. Processions, demonstrations, the occupation of Itis in February of that year. Thousands of students from all schools took part in the processions. An unprecedented mobilization.
It began with demonstrations in support of workers’ demands, with groups of students who had adopted the French slogan: “There’s a débout…” to act as a counterchoir to “Agnelli, Pirelli twin thieves”.
Then, as throughout Europe, the mobilization reached the schools. At the Manin Classical High School, the protest was led Sergio Finardi (later researcher in the United States), Mario De Blasi (son of the President of the Court, later doctor in Parma) e Floriano Soldi (later journalist).
The leaders of the protest were at Itis God Fogliazzason of art in politics, Giancarlo Stortiwho later became a trade unionist, Giorgio Barbierilater a journalist, Mauro Bettoni (young socialists), the brothers Bera, Edy Trivella. At Beltrami the protest leaders were all moderates, many from the Catholic area. The boss was Fulvio Rozzia member of the DC Youth Movement, who later became a bank manager Anna Melegaclose to the Young Republicans.
At the Scientifico the Movement took little root: among the leaders of the protest there were the brothers White Lily (young socialists) e Micio Mori of Catholic extraction.
As Giancarlo Storti he described the protests of those years in the online newspaper WelfareCremona a few years ago, making comparisons with the so-called Onda, the movement that was emerging in schools in 2009.
“I went to review some notes on that period (school year 1968-1969) and the watchword that stood out in all the leaflets was one: “Right to study”. Specifically, the list of requests was very long: right to assembly, book vouchers, transport vouchers, reduction in school fees, a less demanding school timetable (you went to school 6 mornings and 5 afternoons), less authoritarianism, contestation of hierarchical roles , reform of state exams etc.
In these first two-three years, the student movement of ’68 was characterized by a “demanding” platform aimed at expanding rights, to ensure that the lower classes could access school more easily.
In short, the push was to ensure that schools became mass-market and not just at the service of the “bourgeois” class.
That movement, which then reached politics (and only a minority of it to maximalism and extremism) was in tune with the social battle that the working classes were also fighting on rights (remember that the workers’ statute was approved in 1970).
It was the period just after the reform of lower secondary schools with the introduction of compulsory schooling for the eighth grade etc.
A movement that looked at the phenomena of European, French, German and American protest in particular. In the background there were the first demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. A movement that gradually set itself the objective, through protest, of the radical transformation of capitalist society. In this context the social front was not as large as it appears or as it is today.
The families, including grandparents, and the school unions were not present. Sometimes they were hostile. The parties of the left, led by the PCI, looked at that movement with hesitation”.
In the photographs by Giuseppe Faliva the demonstration in front of the Superintendency, then the controls of the Political Office of the Police Headquarters and in front of the microphone Mario De Blasi and Floriano Soldi
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