That must be clear to everyone, really everyone.
In the middle of September these boats will
reach the coast of Gaza and enter the critical zone.
If we lose contact with our boats for just 20 minutes,
if we loose contact with our comrades,
we blockade the whole of Europe!
From this region
13, 14,000 containers are shipped to Israel per year.
We won't let a single thing through.
We will call an inter national strike.
We will block the the roads,
We will block the schools,
we will block everything!
When the departure
of the Global Sumud Flottiglia was announced,
the Italian dock workers made a very clear announcement:
If the Israeli army tries to stop this humanitarian mission
to get food and medicine to the Gaza Strip,
where the people are systematically starved to death
and the hospitals are bombed
then we only have one task here, and that is to block everything.
‘We block everything’
had a double role
the protection of the Global
and the support of the Palestinian people.
It was about breaking the silence
and the impass, which unfortunately
prevailed at that time,
- we are talking last year - ,
in which it seemed normal,
that on the other side of the Mediterranean
- we are talking about our neighbours here -
a genocide is happening.
What happened next
exceeded the expectations of the dock workers themselves.
Since the end of September
this country has been the scene of weeks
of oceanic demonstrations,
where people who had never been on strike before,
took to the streets, left their jobs,
and took part in blockades of port, logistics hubs, motorways,
companies, railway stations, airports...
It was a mass movement, in which the fight against genocide
was closely linked to class struggle
since the instrument of the strike and
the blockade were at the centre of these mobilisations.
In this sense we participated in this movement
in all its manifestations.
We took part in the demonstrations,
in the assemblies, in the blockades of the railway stations and streets.
We have tried to make our contribution with the workers
of the Interporto of Toscana
in which many logistics companies are active,
and which is directly connected to the port of Livorno.
This is where a lot of goods to and from Israel go through.
The workers organised a blockade of the Interporto
for Palestine,
to stop the genocide, together with many other people.
For a whole day the workers of the Interporto
went on strike and all of us together
blocked the transit of goods to Israel.
We have paralysed Italy.
We went to where the containers are handled,
to the Interporto.
It was good, because where oppression reigns
you have to defend humanity.
I was there too. And the message is: we defend humanity.
There were many strikes in Italy.
What happened in Gaza is the murder of humanity.
This has to stop. It can't go on.
They are people too. They are not animals.
They are treated worse than animals.
I was involved in that, with many others in Italy.
All over Italy people were on strike.
There were many people involved.
More than a million.
So I think:
Wherever there is oppression, we should raise our voices.
If we do not raise our voices, oppression will increase.
How will the oppression end then?
Wherever there is oppression, raise your voice.
So that the oppressors knows that they should not do this.
It was a bit of a risk
but a risk that brought great results.
I remember
the night of the 1st of October
when the Israeli military operation against us began.
I still had the opportunity to be on the social networks
and the algorithm of Instagram went crazy:
I saw the places in Rome, the squares in Istanbul,
the hell that had broken loose in Europe
and I said: OK,
I can now throw my mobile phone into the water,
there is now political pressure at international level.
I would not have thought,
that really so many millions
of people in Europe take to the streets.
In Italy, well, it was sheer madness.
We really saw thousands of people
who had never taken to the streets before from all generations,
mainly young people, but also many from my generation
who were a bit more active,
but also the ones in between, who didn't do anything anymore,
who actually felt the need,
to be in the streets not just for one day,
because we were there for several days,
but also to keep fighting:
in the school for better education,
in the workplaces, for more recruitment,
against precariousness etc. etc.
We have managed to activate ourselves.
Prerequisite for the success of ‘Blocchiamo tutto’ was the coordination of the port workers. How did you build that up?
We have started at the national level
to create a coordination,
which today includes several ports.
At least in Italy:
there is Genoa, Trieste, Livorno,
Ravenna, Ancona was added yesterday,
Civitavecchia, Bari,
Salerno, Naples
some port workers in Palermo,
Gioia Tauro has developed very well.
This is something that needs to be perfected,
it still needs to be better coordinated but it works.
This means that if a ship sails from Genoa to Livorno,
a short message is enough today and it will also be blocked in Livorno.
There is a great desire to do this.
It is about the military system that we experience every day.
We have implemented this at the European level
and focussed more on the Mediterranean region,
which in my opinion is, in the truest sense of the word,
the epicentre of wars and death.
Just think of the thousands of dead,
the drowned bodies that lie under the Mediterranean,
because of the wars that we cause and from which they flee,
in addition to the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the conflicts we cause.
From the very beginning
the most receptive people,
who thought like us, were the port workers of Piraeus.
Then we slowly started discussing with the French,
because when you go to Marseille, you meet the port worker in the bar,
you have a chat, and then you come back officially.
That means: It was one step at a time.
We have built up an unofficial network,
and then, under the umbrella of the FSM,
the international trade union, to which we belong as USB,
we organised a whole series of official meetings.
What actually
united us,
was that the approach of the governments is almost identical everywhere:
to destroy the negotiating power of the dock workers
to make the ports more pliable
with poor national collective agreements,
which is an attack on the world of labour,
and to turn these ports into military hubs.
The other element that has connected us is privatisation,
and what happened in Greece is the best example of that:
The Tsipras government, selling the ports
in the conflict between China and Germany,
where the Chinese company Cosco
takes complete control over the port of Piraeus,
cancels all old collective agreements, introduces new collective agreements.
The territory that was controlled by the state,
is now controlled by Cosco, a private company,
and you have to start from scratch with the fights,
to get decent wages again and paid holidays again...
I have read that they have changed the working day now
to 13 hours...
There is a combination of a whole series of dynamics.
In a more subtle way the same thing is happening in Italy.
The port reform, which leads towards privatisation
and the national collective labour agreement which keeps wages low.
And in France, even more subtly, the same thing is happening.
In other words, there is a dynamic that is the same.
The other element is inflation.
Inflation, which all governments are now creating,
for the sake of European rearmament.
Von der Leyen explains that
the European rearmament costs 830 billion Euro,
and that every state is obliged to increase military spending
for example in the case of Italy from 2 per cent, which was already crazy,
to 5% of GDP,
which leads to resources being diverted from the public sector
i.e. education, health and pensions, whoe budgets are not increasing.
That means a reduction of the,
indirect income of workers
So the war returns to you. -
With all these port connections we then succeeded
on the 28th of February of this year,
after a whole series of mobilisations,
that took place in Greece, in Tangier,
in Fos-sur-Mer in an autonomous way,
in Barcelona, in Slovenia, in Italy
in Italy the antimilitarist movement in the movement in the harbours is very strong,
we succeeded to say: OK, let's start with coordinated struggles
on a European level.
The first approach of this coordination
we had with the port workers of Fos-sur-Mer
where this journalist of the magazine ‘Disclose’,
which is a French investigative magazine,
told them and us,
that there are three containers with parts of machine guns
for the the IDF, the Israeli army, on board of this ship.
And from then on we start to coordinate,
because the ship, with these containers
should have been loaded in Fos-sur-Mer, then
come to Genoa and then travel to Salerno.
The dock workers of Fos-sur-Mer manage to block these containers,
but after a series of text messages the fear remains
that the authorities will put these three containers on lorries
to transport them to Genoa by land.
So we start the mobilisation in Genoa,
while the empty ship arrives,
we block the entrance of the lorries to check them
so that when the ship docks, the weapons don't get in.
That was the first activity
of this coordination.
Of course we call the guys from Salerno
and tell them: "After Genoa, where it leaves empty,
the ship will dock in Salerno
be careful that the authorities in Salerno do not load weapons.
In fact, there were two moments: the blockade
and a delegation of workers
who came on board of the ship to inspect,
that no weapons were on board
and that none were loaded.
This information was not disseminated, but it has
a great significance: that a group of workers
in a private company takes charge of this,
to say: Don't worry, there are no weapons here.
On the 26th of September
we had a meeting of the coordination.
The port workers of Tangier took part, i.e. Morocco,
the Greek port workers, the Slovenian, the French.
The French, the CGT at national level,
so not only the representatives of Fos-sur-Mer,
but of all ports in France.
The national secretary of the Spanish dockers, who is a woman.
The Turkish dockers from Istanbul and those from Cyprus,
who made an unbelievable uprising when the flotilla was blocked.
They really caused a riot in this port.
Then we were criticised by the German port workers
but they have a different logic, you know it better than me,
the ‘anti-German’ idea (to defend Israel).
And now we are in a phase
in which we are approached literally from everywhere,
also from India.
Then on the boat I had the opportunity to talk to some Malians,
and I said to them: "We're doing this thing...
maybe you want to discuss it, when you get back."
So we are in contact with the Malian workers.
Then the Australians,
some port workers from the USA...
That means some kind of movement
that we perceive as positive.
And indeed, since this meeting,
we wrote a political document,
which we intend to publish shortly,
and we will set a date for a international mobilisation.
Port workers call for a general strike on November 28, 2025.
The first thing is that they are supported,
because the atrocities must stop.
Because that is our humanity.
If someone kills a person, then that concerns everyone.