In recent days, a farmers’ protest in the southern Italian region of Calabria has expanded to Sicily and other Italian regions, involving fishermen and truckers. The protest is totally ignored by the mainstream media, and finds coverage only on social and local media. A major demonstration is planned for Oct. 10 in Cosenza.

Farmers, fishermen and truckers are strangled by the increased price of fuel, especially diesel fuel. Government aid, and the decision by state energy company ENI to put a price cap is not enough to allow those sectors to work at breakeven level. Rather than producing at a loss, farmers are threatening not to seed wheat for the next season, and fishermen and truckers are threatening to keep boats and trucks in harbor, or in their garages. The grassroots protesters have no confidence in traditional unions, which have betrayed their interests, they say.

The Italian protest, although specific in its nature, has one thing in common with the protests that are sweeping France, Spain and Germany: they counterpose their economic hardship to the government expenditures for rearmament and for supporting the war against Russia in Ukraine, and demand that the government change its priorities. Friends of the Schiller Institute are intervening in the Italian strike with messages of support, and connecting the protest to the wider mass strike movement.