Alarm continues in central Milan following Saturday's clashes during the protest against high living costs. Hundreds of young people, divided into small groups of 10 to 20, mostly dressed in black and some with their faces covered, gathered again in Piazza Duomo, spreading out through the city center streets. By 7 p.m., 160 people had already been taken to the police station, 80% of them minors.
Some threw tables and chairs through the window of the Footlocker store on Via Torino. Others threw trash cans into the street. Protesters then smashed the windows of a Carrefour and entered to loot it. They emerged with bottles of alcohol, throwing food into the street. The same thing happened at the Decathlon in Piazza Cairoli. Via Torino, Via Dante, and Via Orefici became a "graveyard" of trash cans, scooters, mopeds, and bicycles. Other shops were also spared, and the outdoor seating areas of bars were destroyed, with tables and umbrellas destroyed.
Several police cars and riot police officers arrived in the square, and rocks and firecrackers were thrown at them. The police responded with water cannons and tear gas.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, following the events not only in Milan but in several Italian cities such as Turin and Bologna, where Confcommercio estimated damages at over half a million, has called a meeting on public order. And Mayor Giuseppe Sala, after criticizing the few police officers who took to the streets yesterday, engaged in a vitriolic exchange with Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who called him a radical chic. Sala was certainly right about one thing: the belief that it would happen again. And it happened again.
"I don't hold it against the police commissioner, and indeed I do, with whom I work every single day," Sala said this morning, "but I have the impression that the situation is being underestimated and that the forces available at the Milan police headquarters were inadequate." This lack was "nonexistent," according to Senate President Ignazio La Russa, who said he was "speechless." "The usual natural and instinctive reflex of a certain radical chic left that simply can't condemn violent perpetrators without some distinction, always preferring to focus on the alleged responsibilities of the state and its representatives," Piantedosi commented.
And while + Europa, with Riccardo Magi, called for the Interior Minister to report to the Chamber, Democratic Party secretary Elly Schlein opened the demonstration on the cost of living and wages, organized by Nicola Fratoianni and Angello Bonelli of AVS. "We have nothing to do with criminals. We have always condemned them," she emphasized, "but they cannot use violent people to drown out the voices of thousands of people who are peacefully protesting across Italy because they can no longer live." "The government," added Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, "absolutely cannot afford, in the face of protests, even some violent incidents that must be firmly condemned, to deny the root cause—the hardship, the inability for adults, young people, families, and businesses to make ends meet or to have their basic rights guaranteed."
(Unioneonline/D)
