Thousands of Italian ravers of all ages once again took to the streets of Bologna to dance to multiple sound systems with the “Smash repression!” Street Rave Parade, which took place on Saturday April 22 in the centre of Bologna, to protest against the bill passed by Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing coalition on the 30th December’ 22- resulting in Rave event organisers facing up to 6 years in jail and more and taking away people’s rights to dance with the new “decreto anti-rave”.
As the organisers explained “We just wanna to go back to dancing – they wrote –and affirming that they are not willing to give up their freedom and desires to attend raves, etc. We have chosen the street as the place of protest (and Dance!) and to demonstrate that we do not accept the anti-rave law decree, nor the annihilation”.
Even though the parade was escorted by close to a hundred police officers, everything went smoothly with participants enjoying the music blasting from more than ten of the sound systems which travelled from the Giardini Margherita to the Parco Nord.
The Street Rave Parade organiser’s aim was create an event with ever more “safe” spaces allowing everyone to be involved and welcome to participate.
“Through self-management we always create increasingly safe spaces for everyone by sharing transfeminist and anti-prohibitionist practices and we fight against patriarchal oppression. We claim the legitimacy of opening spaces of freedom and initiative and expression”.
The overall feeling was that Italian youth rightfully want to the right to enjoy themselves as they see fit even if in a field with thousands of others and in a much better way than is portrayed by the mainstream media and the government.B
