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| Volume 55 Number 31, December 6, 2025 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
General Strike standing with Palestine in Italy, Rome
demonstration, November 28 2025 - photo: i Diario Spain
On Friday, November 28, a general strike was organised in Italy in which hundreds of thousands of working people also took to the streets. Massive rallies demanded an end to rearmament plans and to the war budget introduced by the Italian government and they also stood with Palestine. In Genoa, Bologna, Turin, Milan and elsewhere, workers and protesters took action -- shutting down airports, stopping military cargo trains, blocking Israeli-bound shipments at ports, and more.
Strike demonstration in Genoa, November 28 2025 - photo:
@zairabiagini
The strike was called by the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), Confederazione dei Comitati di Base (Cobas), and other labour unions, reviving the slogan "Blocchiamo Tutto" ("Shut Everything Down") - the same slogan that characterised September and October's protests against Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla. Those protests blocked ports, transportation and logistical hubs across the country. Workers stressed that their mobilisation is tied both to the war plans of the Italian government and to the struggle of the Palestinian people - whose fate is inseparable from Europe's expanding war economy.
At the demonstrations, banners, chants and public statements denounced Italy's role in supplying weapons to Israel and the government's political and material support for the ongoing US/Israeli genocide.
Genoa was among the focal points of the November 28 mobilisation. From early morning, thousands gathered in Piazza Verdi, where international activists, including Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as Greta Thunberg and Thiago Ávila from the Global Sumud Flotilla, joined the demonstrators.
The Friday strike actions across Italy were followed by a national march for Palestine in Rome the next day, November 29, attended by 100,000 people.
On the same dates, the US organisation Disarm Genocide Now along with others organised nationwide boycotts and rallies in solidarity with the Italian general strike and Palestine. "Workers sit at chokepoints of the economy. When we refuse to build the weapons, move the cargo, or staff the supply chains, the machinery of genocide grinds to a halt," said Chris Smalls, of the Amazon Labor Union and participant in the Global Sumud Flotilla.