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Call Me a Sardine— Italy’s anti-Fascist, anti-Hate Response to Matteo Salvini’s League Party
Wearing a fish placard as a crown, google eyes to the right, finned tail to the left, one demonstrator among 35,000 in Rome Saturday, December 14th, spoke up, saying, “People were looking for someone to start this, and so many people wanted to say, ‘Enough’, ‘Enough to this way of doing politics… ”’
The night before, while on vacation in a medieval village, I accepted an invite to accompany Italian friends to another Sardine evening. Soon, wrapped up warm, I stood amidst a similar crowd all waving, wearing, and cutting out in real time the shape of little fish, sardines, the “everyman” branch of the sea world, as hundreds of people gathered in the Piazza delle Erbe near the shopping lanes of Viterbo, Italy. True to the goal of filling the square like a can of sardines, the crush of bodies made friends of us all as we applauded impassioned speakers, teared up at a unexpected call for John Lennon’s “Imagine”, and lit up the piazza with camera candles while singing Italy’s national anthem and a well known WWII resistance paean, “Bella Ciao.”
