How to distinguish between viruses and vaccines when protesting about housing and schools

Spain is protesting over housing. Reason: ever-rising rents, a rise in evictions, a housing shortage in major cities, and the resulting difficulty young people face in becoming independent. The trigger for the protests: the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid, anger directed at the government and the opposition, and, subsequently, Sánchez’s move to call a snap election in the wake of the protests.

France is protesting over the state of its schools. Reasons: overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of teachers, dilapidated buildings, classrooms without air conditioning, and education funding deemed insufficient. How the protests have unfolded: clashes with the police, infiltration by extremist groups, and the transformation of a wave of dissent against the government into violent unrest.

These issues, of course, are also a source of passion in Italy; they capture the public’s attention, intrigue the political sphere, and engage students – and you can bet that, in the forthcoming school occupations, the upcoming autumn demonstrations and the looming election campaigns, schools and the home will take centre stage. There is nothing wrong with protesting for better living conditions when it comes to rent, and there is nothing wrong with protesting for better living conditions when it comes to education.

However, if one chooses to take to the streets to discuss these issues or to occupy a school in order to bring them to the forefront of the debate, it is worth recalling that, in both cases, there is a significant risk for the protesters—whether French, Spanish, or, one day, Italian—of turning potential solutions into part of the problem and transforming possible remedies into sources of harm. You cannot protest over housing – to secure better rents, to tackle the housing shortage and to give young people more opportunities to become independent – by waging anti-capitalist battles, thereby turning private individuals, with their investments, into part of the problem rather than part of the solution: the housing problem, not only in Italy, can also be resolved by creating the conditions to make investment in residential property viable and profitable, by building more, increasing density where possible, converting existing properties and speeding up planning permission processes. Demonising capital when discussing housing means exacerbating the problems, not solving them.

At the same time, if you stop to think about it for a moment, you cannot campaign for a better future in schools whilst going hand in hand with political parties and politicians who periodically try to mortgage young people’s futures and who, when faced with every problem of the present, propose solutions that aim to increase debt: Is it credible to call for resources for young people and then allocate the few resources available in the public budget to help those due to retire do so earlier? A generational mobilisation in defence of the right to housing should be encouraged to recall a truth that often escapes those who take to the streets to protest: where politics creates incentives, simplifications and regulatory certainty, private capital follows, managing to expand the housing supply and creating more opportunities. Similarly, a generational movement in defence of the right to education should target, first and foremost, the spendthrift political parties that use the little money available to buy public support, politicians who, when discussing education, always focus more on teachers than on pupils, and short-sighted observers who fail to understand that in countries with already heavily burdened public budgets and a neglected education system, the solution cannot simply be to spend more: we must spend more wisely (in 2023, Italy allocated 3.6 per cent of its GDP to public education from primary school to university, compared with an OECD average of 4.2 per cent). Taking to the streets for housing and education is better than taking to the streets to demand that Israel be wiped out from the river to the sea. Doing so without turning vaccines into viruses might be a good idea. Happy protesting, everyone.