Approximately 1,500 people participated in a regional peace demonstration today in front of the US Army’s Camp Darby base near Pisa, according to organizers. The protest, organized by the Stop Rearm Europe network, drew a broad coalition including associations, NGOs, movements from across Tuscany, alongside the CGIL trade union, the No Base Movement, ‘Fighting Grannies’ (Nonne in lotta), base unions, and left-wing political parties. Attendees included Communist Refoundation leader Maurizio Acerbo and Tuscan Regional Council M5S group leader Irene Galletti.
Speakers commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide and expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people. Protesters displayed long peace and Palestinian flags. Raffaella Bolini, spokesperson for Stop Rearm Europe, emphasized from the stage “the urgent need for a mobilization transcending national borders against the European Union’s rearmament policies, particularly NATO members’ choice to raise military spending to 5% of GDP. This is a veritable disaster that will deal the death blow to the entire welfare system underpinning our country.”
Anna Maria Romano of the CGIL Tuscany secretariat stated: “The Tuscan CGIL is here alongside many others to say we absolutely do not want our work and our lives used for rearmament.”
“We joined this demonstration with conviction as the Five Star Movement and as Tuscan citizens,” underscored Galletti, “to say enough to a system investing billions in war while abandoning people’s fundamental rights. It is simply crazy to allocate 5% of European GDP – over €500 billion annually – to rearmament and war infrastructure, while leaving behind healthcare, schools, ecological transition, and small businesses. M5S is faithful to the cause of peace and stands with those, like Francesca Albanese and numerous international witnesses, denouncing the massacre of the Palestinian people, the occupation, and the West’s economic and military complicity. We find it appalling that the Meloni government has become a cog in the war economy.”
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