No Berlusconi Day – The Purple Revolution

After the overwhelming turn out in defence of press freedom in October this year when over 300,000 descended on Piazza del Popolo in Rome, people took to the streets again yesterday for No Berlusconi Day to demand the resignation of Italian Prime Minister and wannabe dictator Silvio Berlusconi.

This time round there were even more people – the organisers claim over a million participants (whilst the local authorities, rather predictably, claimed the laughably low figure of 90,000) – I witnessed hundreds of thousands of people in a seemingly never-ending stream of protesters dressed in purple who marched from Piazza della Republica along the streets of the capital to Piazza San Giovanni, which was quickly filled to capacity.

In what should be a wakeup call to the old guard of Italian politics this peaceful protest was organised entirely through the Internet, and in particular via social network Facebook – the initiative's Facebook page alone had over 360,000 virtual supporters prior to the march, which in itself made a mockery of the state's false participation figures.

Let’s save Italy, Let’s save democracy. Let’s ask for Berlusconi’s resignation

Read the full appeal in English here





All photos © Deborah Swain