Yesterday was a busy day, as we continued to work on arranging the boats and preparing essential equipment—safety lines to secure ourselves and prevent falling into the sea during night shifts. We also had to clean the water tanks and prepare the galley, i.e., the food we will take on board for at least ten days of sailing. All these things are being done in a few days, but they usually take much longer.
Yesterday, there were huge demonstrations in both Catania and Ragusa – there were 15,000 people in Catania. The most experienced activists I spoke to told me that such a large demonstration had not been seen for some time, and above all, not one so well attended on the issue of Palestine. Many groups sang and there were online connections. Among them, Moni Ovadia [NdT: Moni Ovadia is an Italian actor of Jewish origin.] told us that he would have been happy to come on board, but given his age, he had to give up. However, he will think of us from the moment he wakes up until he goes to sleep. In a link-up with Genoa, we were able to feel the solidarity of the dockworkers. It was also announced that MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] Benedetta Scuderi of Alleanza Verdi Sinistra [Greens and Left Alliance] and Annalisa Corrado of the PD [NdT: PD is the democratic party], MP Arturo Scotto of the PD, and Senator Marco Croatti of the Five Star Movement will be traveling with us to Gaza.
Giuseppe Conte [NdT: Giuseppe Conte is the president of the Five Star Movement] and Elly Schlein [NdT: Elly Schlein is the secretary of the Democratic Party] have asked President Meloni to guarantee diplomatic protection for the men and women of the flotilla, as the Spanish government has done for members of Spanish nationality.
The feeling I got from participating in the demonstration, talking to people, and reading the mainstream newspapers, which devoted enormous space to this initiative, is that the sense of depression and indifference, that lethal ebb that has accompanied us since the end of the No Global movement until the victory of the right-wing government three years ago, is crumbling. It is as if this initiative, perhaps a little spontaneous and utopian, has broken the immobility of these last years of war and reopened the possibility of an imaginary world, what we called in 2001 “Another world is possible.”
