Italy: We the People in a Time of Monsters

 

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.― Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1935. 

When governments betray the most basic human values, it is upon us to fix it. We, the people. — Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, September 2025.

 

September 2025: a Time of Monsters.

The US President declared war on US cities, on US immigrants, on transgender people, on museums, and on boats sailing international, Venezuelan, and Colombian waters. He spat on the United Nations at their New York meeting. World leaders were as appalled as the 500 generals summoned to Virginia who endured insults from the unworthy. Yet leaders bowed to the world’s most uncouth dictator.  Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Uganda, and Ghana, among others, aided and abetted his cruel innovation to state-sponsored terrorism against immigrants, accepting planes filled with deported immigrants, sending them either to notorious prisons in nations and even continents where they had no ties, or sending them home from where they fled torture and death.

Israel ramped up its killing machine in Gaza during the High Holy Days, when we Jews atone for our sins.  On September 27th, for example, they struck a residential building killing 11 people, an internally displaced person’s camp, killing eight people, four of them children, and a crowded market killing 17 people. Dozens of people were injured in these incidents. Life-giving infrastructure was destroyed.

European leaders were quick to embrace Trump’s plan to colonize Gaza, hiring Tony Blair to manage the store. They called it ‘the only way to stop the suffering”. They did not ask the obvious questions: why not stop arming Israel, allow aid in, begin reparations now, put teeth into the UN declaration of genocide, try the war criminals, free Palestine?

September 2025: A Time for We the People: 

We, the People, in Britain and the United States, organized against anti-immigrant forces.  The world over, we decried Israel’s targeted murder of Palestinian journalists and the starvation death toll rising in Gaza. On August 31, 500 people from 46 countries, in 50 boats, set sail for Palestine, loaded with material aid. The goal of the Sumud Flotilla was to build global pressure to end the blockade, the genocide, and the occupation of Palestine. Support for the Flotilla, and for an end to Israel’s siege of Gaza, exploded on the streets of cities across the world. The leaders—attempting to look like they were responding—gave fiery speeches at the United Nations and made declarations for Palestinian Statehood. Netanyahu was not arrested in New York for war crimes, but the leaders did walk out on him. As I write, in early October, the boats have reached Gaza, Israel commandeered them and kidnapped all those on board, except for one boat. The long-term impact of the mission on Gaza is unclear. We know that We the People are not standing silent.

On our way to Italy from Switzerland, we stopped for several hours in Barcelona, so that we could join the crowd sending off the Sumud Flotilla. We raced by train and foot, to the port and back to the airport, making it in time to see the ships and be with people, who, like us, were heartbroken from two years of trying to stop a genocide, inspired by each other and those taking on this dangerous and desperate mission to confront a famine manufactured by Israel with the complicity of US, European and Arab allies. We just barely made it back in time to grab our bags out of storage and get on our plane to Florence.

It was an honor to be in Italy during the month of the Flotilla and to watch We the People unite with a power I have not witnessed before.

 

 

The Italian Navel 

We spent most of September in the tiny town of Pozzuolo, in Umbria, outside Castiglione di Lago, edging Tuscany, between Florence and Rome. “Umbria is in the center of Italy. We are the center of Umbria,” a new friend in Pozzuolo explained. He and his wife had invited us for merenda—what Italians tradionally eat before their late dinner: We were served five small slices of cheese each older than the last, the thinnest slices of ham, winter melon, dry wine, biscotti, and desert liquor, in the backyard among fig, olive, persimmon, trees, as the September sun softened and evening breezes comforted. He handed me the oldest fromaggio to savor, adding, We are the navel of the world. 

I did not tell him about the other places we’ve been to where the people saw themselves as the heart of humanity. Istanbul and Sarajevo both claim to be where East meets West. Norway claims that the Vikings were the first to bring the world together. In Reykjavik, I saw a map with Iceland at the center. At the Jeju History Museum, a stained glass dome depicts the world emerging from the Korean island. We had been preparing to go to Ghana. We watched a promotional video that began: We are the center of the world.

Rural towns in Italy and the United States

In Pozzuolo,  I had time to contemplate how this tiny farming town compared to rural communities in the United States. There appeared to be many similarities. Neighbors helped neighbors. Gossip occurred in the grocery store and the bar. A cheap local market sold underpriced vegetables and fruits. There were few sidewalks, and not much in the way of public transit. There was a bus that ran three times a day, taking us to the train station in Castiglione. Great for kids, hard for youth.

Recent global changes have affected small towns in both countries. Cell phones have changed socialization. More people sit alone with their phones in parks and cafes. Festivals that were more ethnically based and traditional are being taken over by traveling corporate funmakers. In both countries, wealthy city folks are buying up properties, installing gates and alarm systems in communities that never before locked their doors. (In the US, we call them McMansions.) The wealthy rural interlopers in both countries come from all parts. Their bank accounts are universal passports.

There are differences. You can tell you are in an Italian small farm town by looking at the trees. The cypress trees are trimmed to grow tall and thin. The pines are tall with fat trunks and no branches or needles until the top, where they bush like a flower. Olive trees are silvery and everywhere: in orchards, but also on school yards and growing wild, as do fig trees, pomegranates, and persimmons. The farms are smaller than in the US, and the herds and chickens are more likely to run freely. People still spend more time lingering over a meal here, but not as much as they used to. The merenda our friends shared with us was special– not something they do every day. And there are no gun shops or signs warning newcomers that all residents are armed. The prize at the local festival was a ham, not a firearm.

Guns.

 I feel guilt about being outside of the United States, too far away to fight Trump’s ICE attacks, his human needs cuts, and his war machine. I feel no guilt about escaping the guns. I have been a gun-hater since I was eight, and a neighbor in North Carolina flashed her revolver and her racism. Gun proponents in the US span the ideological spectrum, and I have no energy to fight them.

When in Rome… See a Petanque Global Championship. 

We came into Rome three times: to take a quick trip to Belgrade, to catch a plane to Ghana, and to watch the World Games.

We made Italy our home in September, because our niece was competing in the Petanque World Championships, held in Rome, Sept. 18-21.  To watch her play, we spent two nights in the ancient city. Our place was over an hour’s walk from the regal Gardens of the Villa Borghese, where the games were held. Her first game was at 8 AM. We skipped breakfast and began our walk at 6:30. At that hour, Rome was showing its inequities. People sleeping on the streets were still wrapped in blankets on the sidewalk. Some urban angel had left bags at their feet. One man was sitting up, surveying the items: a large container of shampoo, water, and breakfast. As we entered the park district, we passed the ancient palace walls and palatial hotels where guests were sipping ten-euro cappuccinos.

It was a distinct pleasure to watch the concentration and world-class skill of our 39-year-old sweetheart, whom we have known since she was smaller than a Cabbage Patch doll. I am a notorious dunce when it comes to sports, but I began to understand the game by the end of the day. I was so impressed by the camaraderie between competing players. There were referees, but 90% of the time, the two teams decide together who scored if the boules are close. They get down on the ground together to measure the distances. The community of people in the world who advance in this sport is tiny, and they all appreciate being with others who share their passion. Bekah said 50 countries were participating. To qualify, they had to have a male and female team. It is a male-dominated game in most places, so that eliminates many countries. Others did not come because they didn’t have the financial support for a trip to Rome. Laos has one of the best teams in the world, but it could not afford to participate. Madagascar and Italy won. Bekah stayed in the game until the last day.

We came to Rome three times and never saw the Colosseum.

Historically Divided Italy

Italy’s center links two different Italys that we never saw: the North and the South.

North and South became one country in 1861, and then proceeded to become more divided. Geographically, they differ in ways that favored human habitation in the North, where fertile plains were surrounded by the Alps, providing ample water. The South is arid, rocky, and on an earthquake fault. Live volcanoes have destroyed cities multiple times over the centuries. After the two became one political entity, the North industrialized. The South was a source of temporary labor, creating wealth for the North. Migrants from Italy to the  Americas and the British Isles a century ago came primarily from Southern Italy.

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci grew up in the arid southern island of Sardinia and studied in the northern industrial town of Turin. In 1926, he called for solidarity between industrial workers in the North and peasants in the South. What did they have in common? They were subalterns, of course. And they faced not just the oppression of capital but also the rise of Mussolini’s fascism.

 

Turin is still the home of Fiats and Martinis, as it was in Gramsci’s time. Milan’s other de facto capital of the North is home to Gucci, Ferrari, and Prada. These brands, too, rely on sweatshop labor. The Alps are still greening and watering a region that rivals neighboring Switzerland for wealth and mountain views. Meanwhile, the South is still largely agricultural, with high unemployment and GDPs more like Latin America than northern Europe.

Today, much of the lowest-wage work in the North is done by workers from all parts of the global South and nearby Albania. They labor in Milan and offshore sweatshops, producing both high and low-end clothing. In Tirana, I began to see Italy from an Albanian perspective: the wealthy neighbor who squeezes local enterprises by flooding the market with cheap goods made with Balkan labor, who are treated as second-class citizens. Coming from the country with the world’s most calcified racist labor/migration structures, racializing and denying rights and wealth ladders to immigrants who work the hardest, most essential, and lowest-paid jobs. It was a familiar ugly. Not thinking, I bought an inexpensive, comfortable shirt with a Made in Italy label in Sarajevo.

A divided Italy unites to support Gaza —

GAZA IS BURNING. WE WILL BLOCK EVERYTHING

On September 22, divided Italy united. One million people— 2% of the population—in 81 cities and towns. North, South, and Center— including Castiglione Di Lago, the town closest to us—held protests. “Go to the square,” the leaflets and posts said. Trains and buses did not run, and roads were blocked, so many people, like us, were unable to participate. A video of people stuck in traffic documented that many felt happy to be immobilized for this reason. We were among those delighted to have our plans foiled for Gaza.

In Rome, 300,000 filled the square. Priests held a vigil. Students walked out of school. Firefighters Union representatives who joined the general strike reminded me of the first responders we witnessed in Belgrade fighting government cuts to emergency services; Here, their solidarity with victims had no borders:  “First responders will never be complicit in genocide,” they said.

They demanded that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a strong ally of Netanyahu and Trump, stop allowing Italian ports to be used for arms shipments to Israel. They wanted her to join other European powers in recognizing Palestinian sovereignty and statehood, and they wanted her to protect the Italian nationals on the Samud flotilla, including four Italian lawmakers. Meloni came to power by milking and intensifying racist anti-immigrant sentiment.  Like other European countries, popular sentiment can swing either way — toward nativism or transnational solidarity. The Samud flotilla may or may not make a material difference for Gazans under siege, but it has already had a profound impact on Italy. sparking a social movement that is extraordinary for any place at any time. As Israel surrounded and arrested the Flotilla today, Italian unions and their subaltern allies called for another General Strike for October 3.

In a time of monsters, a divided Italy united in solidarity with hungry people across the Mediterranean Sea.

 

This essay about a visit to Italy in September 2025 is part of a series. In October 2023, my spouse, David, and I sold our house in Minneapolis, MN. USA. Since then, we have been traveling the world. I write a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.