No Meloni Day: the ritual repeats itself. But this time, violence breaks out in the classroom before the march

No Meloni Day is nothing new. It began in November 2022, a few weeks after the government took office, as a student protest against the centre-right administration. Since then, it has recurred every autumn following a familiar pattern, almost like a ritual. In November 2024, in Turin, around fifteen police officers ended up in A&E due to fumes from a rudimentary explosive device, and an effigy of the Minister for Education, Valditara, was set alight. In November 2025, there were around fifty demonstrations, with tensions running high in Bologna, where some protesters stormed a university lecture theatre, disrupting a lecture.

Once again today, much of the same is happening. There are the same organisations, from the Students’ Union to Osa and Cambiare Rotta, the same chants, the same faces of ministers smeared with red paint. Once again, Turin is at the epicentre: at the start of the march, photographs of Meloni, Crosetto and Valditara with their faces smeared with red paint were laid on the ground, and at the front of the march were masked protesters, despite the prefecture’s ban.

This year, however, there are three new developments. The first is the timing. No Meloni Day has been brought forward from November to October to ride the wave coming from France – where secondary school pupils have been blocking schools for weeks, forcing the government to close them – and, to some extent, from Spain. “Let’s do as they do in France” is the most frequently repeated slogan, and in Florence a banner reading “L’Ecole est à nous” was paraded. It is a protest conceived as a European movement, which also borrows its forms from our neighbours: the occupations taking place in Turin over the last few days have lasted just an afternoon, but the model is that of the French blockades.

The second is the target. Among the photos defaced in Turin was one of Elly Schlein. In Rome, the march chanted slogans against the PD and the CGIL. It is no longer, or not merely, a protest by the left against the ruling right: it is a protest against the entire political establishment, including the opposition. Yet another problem for a broad coalition which, on the eve of the primaries, thought it could count on support from those streets.

The third issue is the banner. Alongside long-standing grievances – from dilapidated buildings to precarious teaching staff and the high cost of living – this year there is the Valditara decree, which sets a cap of 30 per cent on the number of foreign pupils per class. It has become the symbol of the protest movement: ‘No one is a foreigner’ was the slogan of the march in Milan, and the organisers accuse the government of trying to make people believe that ‘the problem with our schools is foreign pupils’.

Then there is the link to international politics: the most common slogan on the streets is ‘money for schools, not for war’, with countless variations, right up to ‘we want more classrooms, not more bombs’ shouted outside the Ministry. In Turin, alongside photos of ministers, the word ‘Leonardo’ – the defence company – was displayed. It is a pity that the budget measures the government has just sent to Brussels do the exact opposite of what the demonstrators are protesting against: to keep the deficit under control, it has halved the additional defence spending planned for 2028, and the European flexibility intended for rearmament largely ends up being passed on to the public in the form of higher bills. One may debate whether this is the right choice, but it is difficult to call this a ‘government of war’.

One question remains: why is it always Turin? For years, there has been a well-organised activist network in the city, which not even the clearance of the Askatasuna social centre last December has managed to disperse. And there are student collectives acting as a link between secondary schools and that world: also in December, six pupils aged between 16 and 17, almost all from Einstein High School, were placed under house arrest. The significant change this year is that the violence broke out inside schools before it reached the streets. Yesterday, around forty young people wearing balaclavas and carnival masks stormed three schools – damaging a primary school in the process – and pelted the Carabinieri with stones. Today, when the march reached the prefecture, several hundred demonstrators broke away from the rest of the group, covered their faces and started again. For the majority of the students on the streets today, the grievances are genuine: schools are falling apart, there is a shortage of teachers, and transport is expensive. But the ‘No Meloni Day’ ritual has a momentum of its own. Every year, the same organisations bring different young people onto the streets, and every year in Turin an organised minority steals the limelight.