The students and workers who have returned with tents to Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan since last Wednesday to protest against high rents are occupying the spaces of the former Splendor cinema in Viale Gran Sasso.
A small procession of a few dozen people left from the Milan Polytechnic with a banner at their heads reading “We are tents and we’ll get a roof”. The national assembly will be held today in the abandoned building to discuss the issues of high rents and the housing emergency, at which “about a hundred people from all over Italy are expected”.
The students, who today will welcome collectives and living networks in the spaces of the former Splendor cinema, “but also residents”, they explain, will spend this night and the following ones inside the building. The objective is to make it known that “the spaces to be converted for community use exist”. As Ilaria Lamera, the Polytechnic student who first pitched a tent in Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci, now in turn in the building in Viale Gran Sasso, points out, “the situation has not changed since May. The institutions seemed very present, but then the only one that has continued to talk to us is the Municipality of Milan. And we don’t see any serious and concrete commitment on their part either.” The proposals put forward by the Administration are “to improve the ‘agreed fee’, which to us seems like a way to legitimize prices that are in any case unsustainable – adds Ilaria – and the ‘widespread student system’, but from what we understand the funds are lacking, so we cannot It’s a concrete proposal.” What the students of ‘Tents in the Square’ are asking for is “public will because in our opinion there is money to renovate old public houses”. Inside the Splendor, cleaning and set-up operations are starting to prepare the space to welcome this afternoon’s assembly.
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