Lorenzo Tondo: Italians unite to fight descent into xenophobia

By Dilip -
Tens of thousands of people have crammed together in Rome on Saturday as part of the growing “sardines” movement against the leader of the far-right League and Italy’s former deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, and his allies.
Protesters converged in Piazza San Giovanni early in the afternoon in a bid “to further shake up the country’s politics and battle xenophobia”, in what was billed as their biggest rally.
“We are very happy and reached our goal,” said one of the movement’s founders, Mattia Sartori, 32, as more than 100,000 people were expected to march in the capital.

“We are anti-fascist, pro-equality, against intolerance, against homophobia,” Santori told AFP, as protesters sang the anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao. “We are weary of this culture of hatred,” the movement’s representative in the Italian capital, Stephen Ogongo, a 45-year-old journalist of Kenyan origin, told AFP. ‘‘We will no longer tolerate language that is racist, fascist, discriminatory or sexist.”...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/14/sardines-pack-piazza-in-rome-for-protest-against-matteo-salvini

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