Struggles in Italy

strugglesinitaly.wordpress.com

 

is a blog dedicated to making available to people, mostly outside Italy, information about “what else” goes on in Italy. The following is from their blog.

 

In recent times, a specific repertoire of images on Italy has dominated international media, presenting a selective, partial and limited image of the country. Examples of this are the controversial views on Italian justice that emerged in the Knox trial, the downgrading of Italian public assets by Standard and Poors and by Moody’s (always presented from the impersonal perspective of the “market”), the despicable image of women fostered by the Italian political class, and, of course, the everlasting pizza, spaghetti, and mafia. However, there is much more going on in Italy, much more that should be getting adequate coverage.

 

In the past two decades Italy has witnessed an increase in social conflict prompted by a variety of political subjects. Trade unions, students, migrants, precarious workers, environmental activists have voiced their right to the future, often giving birth to productive synergies.

However, these movements rarely if ever receive international coverage. We believe that the reasons for this silence are many, and have to do with linguistic limitations, the Italo-centric perspective of some movements, and the biased perspective of mainstream media.

For all these reasons, we decided to initiate Struggles in Italy, a grassroots self-education and information project in languages other than Italian. The project is entirely volunteer-run. We are precarious workers, translators, IT workers, students, researchers, environmentally conscious people, activists, and much more. We come from a variety of backgrounds, in geographical, personal, and political terms. In short, we are active citizens committed to improve the world we live in, and more specifically Italy, our country of residence or of origin.

Struggles in Italy’s blog is a dictionary of Italian struggles, a place that hosts news and deeper reflections. We cover political activism, education, culture, the environment, workers’ and community struggles, the mafia, the media and mainstream politics. Struggles is also a collective of volunteer writers, a transnational community of workers, students and researchers living in different parts of the world. We all share the aim to show Italian reality, made of struggling people. We’ve made local struggles much more visible so they can be studied and sense can be made of them. Our perspective is indipendent from mainstream media. We have the blog, a Twitter account and a Pinterest board. Our main language is English, but we wrote also in French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. We’re keen to expand our output beyond English. We’re looking for new people to work on writing or editing articles, translating them into other languages, reporting from the field and much more. Enthusiasm and expertise are both appreciated – in any language. Join us, share our message and spread the voice about the project.

Our email is strugglesinitaly@gmail.com