sad story of the twenty-first century 
He looked like a quiet morning in the center Rome. Nothing to do with the seventies. Shops open, groups of tourists, the market of Campo dei Fiori, full of people. Of course, there was a student demonstration to block traffic. "But we are accustomed to going on for two weeks," sighed a policeman. At 11 you can hear the screams in a few minutes a wave of kids running away from Piazza Navona invade the stalls in Campo dei Fiori. They are small, fourteen years almassimo, scared, red-faced. Before the Senate started the first charge of students of the right. They arrived with a truck loaded with iron bars and sticks, mysteriously ignored by cordons of police. They put the head of the parade, Waving belts and sticks around. Surrounding a boy of thirteen or fourteen years, and fill him with blows. The police, within walking distance, not moving. I'm sixty, have helmets and ski masks, big sticks and long, often handles of picks, covered with black adhesive and wrapped in tricolor. Shouting "Duce, Duce". "The school is cleaned up." They claim to be students of the Students' Block, a small right-wing movement. They have between twenty and thirty years, but one that has the air of being the boss is on a forty, with a baseball cap. They are well organized by a paramilitary group, attacking in waves. Another charge affects a group of high school students of Virgil, De Chirico's art school and the University of Roma Tre. A young boy from a technical institute, Alessandro, was hit the head, falls and throw kicks. "Enough, enough, let's go to the police!" say the professors. I follow the squad that goes before the Senate and met the Chief Executive. "You can not stand still while
beat my students!" protest a lady with white hair. A student raises his voice: "And tell that protects them, you want the fighting." The officer yells, "Learn the education, child." The teacher insisted: "Do your job, stop the violence." The official response: "But those who do violence are to the left." There is an uprising of the squad: "Left? With swastikas?". The white-haired professor exhibits a large crucifix that around his neck: "I'm Catholic. I teach for 32 years and I never saw an action of violence by my students. There are people with the bars that beat boys
helpless. What does it matter if they are right or left? is a crime and you must intervene. " The official meanwhile has spotted a video camera and his notebook: "I never said those are left." Monica, a student of Rome: "But they just heard it all! Who thinks he is, Berlusconi?". "You see how they respond?" Laura tells me, of Economics. "They want to pass the same equation mob of students left." The teacher called Rosa Raciti, teaches high school art De Chirico, and fear: "I feel responsible. I did not want to come, then the students have asked me to accompany them. Come on, I said jokingly that you do not even know where the Senate. Seemed a good thing, finally talking about serious problems. Many had never been in an event, it seemed a civil baptism. Other than civil! It was a merry procession, peaceful, until I got those with helmets and sticks. Under the eyes of the police. One thing to induce vomiting. You have to write it. Although, I tell the truth, if I had not seen but only read the newspaper, there would never have believed. "At a quarter to twelve other start screaming before the Senate. Francesco Cossiga is coming out." He is happy, eh? "yells in his face a senior professor. On Monday, the president emeritus gave the line, in an interview with National Newspaper: "Maroni should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior (...) infiltrated the movement with agents ready for anything, and let for ten days the demonstrators devastate the city. After that, the strong popular support, the sound of ambulance sirens must be higher than that of the police cars.
forces of order should massacre the demonstrators without pity and send them all to 'hospital. beaten, everyone, including teachers who incite them. Maybe not the elderly, but the teachers girls yes. "
It's almost noon, about twenty blacks remains helmets isolated from the others in the clashes. To meet the comrades undertaking an unusual, leaves the side of Piazza Navona, sticks in hand through the police cordon, undisturbed, and returned to square away from Agonale. I decide to follow them but I was stopped by a policeman. "Where do you go?". I realize to be devoid of bar, then suspicious. While checking the journalist card, I note that I have just gone in the wind. The beat cop of
is memorable: "We have not noticed." Part of a group of officials from the signal. A police officer says at one another: "They come those pieces of shit communists." The other replies: "Then you go to the streets to protect us?". "Yes, but not now." Skip Vice Quaestor: "A few rumors, the visors down." Calanus visors and wait.
Five minutes. Five minutes in which case the pandemonium in the streets. A group of four left, a mixture of students and people of the wisdom of the social centers, Piazza Navona bursts in and goes against the handful of Block Student, concentrated in the bottom of the square. In the path take the chairs and tables outside the bar, lowering the gate, and hurl them against those on the right.
Only then, after five minutes of beating, and five minutes of fighting are not few, looks out the police. It cordon around sixty Block Student, rejects the onslaught of leftist students. At the end of fifteen stops neo-fascists, who were taking the kids to throw a bolt. A group of students approaching the police to ask why the strange behavior. They have their arms raised, they have neither helmets nor bottles. The first student, Stephen, a Wave of Political Science, is hit with a truncheon blows to the neck (eventually in the hospital) and the peaceful protest retracts.
at noon and a half on the battlefield were two boys with his head in his hands stained with blood, smashed chairs, coffee table and cripple a large wooden Pinocchio without a leg, taken from the window of a toy store and used as a weapon. Duccio, a physics student I met in employment, tense wanders in search of brother small. "I think it's over, now it's over. And if not today, tomorrow. You want to organize peaceful protests, to make you come
ideas, lessons in the streets, torchlight processions, sit in on the flower children. You want to reject the political exploitation, to want to think about concrete things. On the news tonight we will talk only of accidents, day after day will, however, the idea that students want the casino. Cossiga is the method. They're screwing up. "
(Curzio Maltese)
