Peace March, three thousand march in Assisi. Conte and Fratoianni: “No more weapons”

At least three thousand set out for Assisi, on a sun-kissed day, to demonstrate “against war and against rearmament”. The occasion, the traditional march of peace and brotherhood opened for the first time by 300 children from various schools in Italy, to shout no to the conflicts that have bloodied Ukraine for 940 days “and after 350 days of massacres in Gaza “. On the soundtrack of Imagine many young people “armed” only with the rainbow flag, associations and political exponents of the centre-left, led by the leader of the 5 Star Movement Giuseppe Conte and the leader of the Italian Left Nicola Fratoiannithey made their way through the river of people next to the mayor Stefania Proietticandidate for president of the Region for the broad field and several parliamentarians of the Democratic Party, including the coordinator of the national secretariat Marta Bonafonirepresenting Elly Schlein.

The reasons for the march

“Today there are so many of us. So many people who have their eyes open to the world instead of gazing at their own navels and who realize the enormous danger that is advancing. We are here to sound the alarm, we are here to call our society to open its eyes on the gravity of the moment, the looming dangers, the need to react”, he says Flavio Lottipresident of the PerugiAssisi Foundation for the Culture of Peace, as the procession approaches Assisi. “It is one of the most important marches we have ever carried out because the moment is truly dramatic. There are forces that want to drag us into war and we are not responding: there is no policy that protects us. That’s why we are here”, he adds Lotti explaining that he had invited politicians to a discussion, asking them “to deal with their responsibility to avoid reaching the point of no return”.

From M5S to 5S: stop increase in military spending

“The ongoing wars, the strategy of military escalation, demonstrate that there is a political deficit, with a capital P, not the politics of wordsmiths”, attacks Conte, fresh from voting against in Strasbourg on the resolution to support the Ukraine in which restrictions on the use of weapons to strike also in Russian territory are eliminated. “Politics means dialogue, building the foundations for a diplomatic initiative that embraces the horizon of peace and security for all the populations involved and not meaningless. unique, according to the logic of the primacy of those who have the most weapons produce and use the most weapons, of the primacy of oppression”, insists the leader of the M5S. Convinced that a turning point in negotiations must be “absolutely imposed” in Ukraine and that in Gaza we must say “stop the extermination and illegitimate occupation in the West Bank”. In perfect harmony with Fratoianni: “It’s time for governments to say enough with the escalation of weapons that brings us closer every day to a global war on European territory. Let them say enough to the arms race and the crazy increase in military spending, which distract resources from people’s primary needs”, insists the leader of Si. Launching an appeal to Conte and the dem Bonafoni: “We can all in the progressive camp say that spending 2% of GDP more on weapons in Italy is madness and to act accordingly in the parliamentary halls? I am not interested in planting the flag of the first to arrive, of the most pacifist among the pacifists, but I am interested in finding solutions to the inability of politics and institutions in diplomatic action. An initiative capable of stopping the barbarism is urgently needed.”