"Sardines" fill the squares ... the new Italian movement attracts tens of thousands

Tens of thousands demonstrated in the center of the Italian capital, Rome, on Saturday, at the invitation of the "Sardines" movement, which was founded just one month ago to oppose the leader of the League in the far-right, Matteo Salvini.

The demonstrators gathered in the large square "San Giovanni" in Rome, expressing their rejection of fascism and rhetoric and hate speech, as they put it.

The movement takes the sardines as an inspiration for the behavior of this type of fish that moves in groups to confront its enemies from the big fish.

This movement appeared a month ago in Bologna, Italy, when four people called for a demonstration in order to condemn the speech of "hatred and discord" adopted by Salvini, the former second man in the government and leader of the National Right League party, and they were surprised by the participation of about 15 thousand people in it.

Since then, there have been numerous demonstrations in which about 300,000 people participated in Milan, Turin, Florence, Naples and Palermo.

But it appears that the demonstration on Saturday in Rome is the largest so far, with a police officer estimated the number of participants at about 40,000, according to Reuters news agency.

"These sardines are definitely in the left camp. Nobody wants to insult, or spread hatred ... I came to be a witness, otherwise I was ashamed of being Italian," retired Roberto Ribeiro told AFP. He added, "They do not adopt a stylized political speech, and this is a good thing. Stuffy political speeches cause division."

Matteo Santori, 32, one of the four founders of the movement, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that the first demonstration was against Salvini and then it became "a reaffirmation of democracy".

Santuri is an economics researcher and volunteer athletic coach in a number of societies. Together with other founders, Andrea Garifa, 34, who works as a tour guide, and engineer Roberto Morrotti, 31, wants to "return to politics its appeal," they told reporters on Friday.

Their Rome representative, Stephen Ogungo, 45, who works as a journalist with origins in Kenya, explained that he created a Facebook page called "Sardine Roma" 15 days ago.

He added that the next morning he found that his number of followers reached ten thousand who wanted to participate, and the next day they became twenty thousand.

What is the future of the movement?
Given that the movement was spontaneous, Ogungu did not provide a census of the number of participants in the Saturday demonstration. To him, "what is important is for a large number of people to take to the streets to say they are tired of a culture of hate." "We will no longer accept racist, fascist and discriminatory speech," he added.

"At the beginning, we didn't exist a month ago," said Stephen. "The important thing is to get the message across to individual minds and awaken consciences," and to get people to "make rational choices," and politicians to "change the tone." Santuri wants to go further, "but without urgency."

While asserting that their inclinations are leftist, they consider themselves a "centrist entity" and do not want to form a party or replace existing entities. A number of the movement's activists are active for the climate, against the mafia and poverty, and for the right of migrants to land.