Genoa rose on Friday, November 28, in a powerful display of international solidarity, as thousands of dockworkers and grassroots groups – including DiEM25 and MERA25 – brought the city to a standstill during a vast demonstration.
Their message was clear: the fight against the genocide in Gaza and the fight for workers’ rights in Europe and across the world are inseparable.
The demo – involving CUB, USB, CLAP, Cobas and other grassroots unions – was called in response to the Giorgia Meloni government’s budget, which diverts €23 billion from healthcare, education, wages and welfare into military spending.
At the same time, Italy’s deepening complicity in the Israeli assault on Gaza has become impossible to ignore, from arms shipments to political cover. In Genoa, where dockworkers have repeatedly refused to load weapons destined for Israel and other war zones, these struggles converged naturally.
Among the international figures who joined the march was our very own Yanis Varoufakis, who travelled to Genoa in solidarity with the workers. He marched shoulder to shoulder with UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese, climate activist Greta Thunberg, writer and journalist Chris Hedges, and anti-Zionist rabbi Dov Weiss – a coalition united in opposition to war, profiteering and authoritarianism.
Varoufakis linked the picket lines of Europe to the resistance of Palestinians in Gaza, and to global movements challenging corporate power. He referenced the Make Amazon Pay strike – a global worker mobilisation coordinated by the Progressive International – emphasising that the same forces driving inequality and repression at home are enabling genocide abroad.
“The struggle of workers and the struggle against genocide are mutual,” Varoufakis said, “because the problems created by bankers and fascists are mutual.”
His words resonated deeply in a city that knows the cost of war profiteering. Genoa’s port has become a symbol of workers’ refusal to serve the war economy: dockworkers have repeatedly blocked the loading of arms shipments destined for Israel and other conflict zones, often at personal risk.
Friday’s mobilisation was part of a broader international wave. On November 29, protests continued in Milan and Rome for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, while workers around the world joined actions against Amazon and the corporate interests fuelling militarisation.
The Genoa strike showed, once again, that solidarity is a force more powerful than any government budget or corporate lobby. When workers refuse to participate in a system of exploitation and war, they create the conditions for a different world – one grounded in dignity, justice and peace.
Genoa’s dockworkers, and all who marched with them, have made it clear: we will not be complicit.
Do you want to be informed of DiEM25's actions? Sign up here
