6pm: The cortege is entering piazza Maggiore, chanting “You are the only alien foreigners in Bologna!” against the rightwingers. The speeches recall the hours of struggle today, the police charges and the determination in responding to their provocations; a new process of struggle is announced, starting from next thursday with a new metropolitan assembly that will relaunch patterns of struggle, that comes out strengthened in the city by this great day of refusal and antagonism!

4.45pm: The cortege restarts from piazza Verdi and marches towards downtown and piazza Maggiore square, shouting that no one-hour leagueist showcase can erase the reality of a different, mestizo, and solidal city – except with racism and race-to-the-bottom politics!

3:37pm: The cortege takes a breath in piazza Verdi, ready to move again towards the downtown. The day is still long, come and join us!

2.20pm: The Difendere Bologna cortege keeps growing in spite of the day of struggle began as much as 5 hours ago. Now it stops in Piazza Verdi square, always a bulwark against racism and austerity in the city, thanks to the struggles led by the university collectives, that freed it already from the police in May 2013 and that today endured many police charges along with squatters, grassroots unionists and all the solidal Bologna!
1:45pm: the cortege is now on the San Donato bridge, moving towards downtown. THERE IS NO PLACE FOR SALVINI IN BOLOGNA!

1:30pm: after the charges the  “difendere Bologna” cortege stays united and moves towards via del lavoro

 

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That Bologna struggling everyday against neoliberalism and its worst byproducts (racism, race-to-the-bottom, exploitation in schools and on workplaces) said it loud and clear: the presence of Salvini in the city today, on November 8, would not be tolerated. Salvini’s message, which took the Piazza Maggiore square today along with Berlusconi, Storace and Meloni [other right-wing fascist politicians – a.n.] in order to rebuild a centre-right bloc led by the Northern League towards the next municipal elections.

Since early morning the demonstrators on the Stalingrado bridge, the meeting point of “Difendere Bologna” [“Let’s defend Bologna”, the name of the demonstration – a.n.] were a great lot, with thousands of people which were determined to reach the city centre, that was shut down for the occasion by a massive police deployment. Squatters, high school and university students, young precarious workers, teachers and education sector employees, loaders of the logistics sector and grassroots unions wanted to express their refusal of the league-ist invasion, and were stopped at Bologna’s inner ring road, as the police was actually surrounded by the arrival of the march moving from the XX Settembre square towards porta Mascarella – a cortege that was then charged too by police.

7 charges were unleashed against the demonstrators that still stood together, and then took the decision of moving towards the city periphery, in order to restart communication in the most crisis-ridden areas, places that were also hit by the racist rethoric of the “race-to-the-bottom”.

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