Tens of thousands of people rallied across Italy on March 1 to defend and extend the rights of immigrants, on a day that organisers dubbed "St. Papers".
In Rome, several thousand immigrants and supporters marched from Porta Maggiore, an area with a high migrant population, to Piazza Vittoria in the centre of the tourist district.
Large contingents from a variety of groups marched, representing Romanian, Kurdish and African communities.
There were larger marches in other cities, with 20,000 in Naples, a centre for African agricultural workers, and 10,000 in Padua.
The St. Papers march was the culmination of a "day without migrants" — a strike by some of the more than 5 million documented and undocumented migrants that make up 10% of the country's workforce. The strike was mostly symbolic, but featured actual stoppages in some places.
More than 50 factories closed in Breschia after the action gained the support of the metalworkers union.
Marchers in Rome voiced frustration with the increasing anti-immigrant mood of the country and a determination to resist it.
"We work day and night", said Ion, from Romania, who lived undocumented in the country for years before Romania entered the EU. "We pay taxes every time we buy something."
Others, especially younger participants, stressed their universal rights, with speaker after
speaker exhorting the march to "stand up for our humanity".
Much of the rally's organisation came from a rolling call on Facebook, with "spontaneous committees" arising. Practical arrangements for each rally were handled by local anti-racist coalition committees, organised in part through Italy's network of
"social centres", a successor to the far-left autonomist movement.
The movement stresses the degree to which Italy excludes undocumented people from full citizenship. "We are all migrants" was one key refrain.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi responded to the protest by stating that the left "wanted to flood the country with migrants". Since 2001, migrants in Italy have been subject to increasing legislative and political persecution.
Key to this regime is the Bossi-Fini act, drafted by leaders of the anti-immigrant Northern League and the post-fascist National Alliance party.
Bossi-Fini and various supplements to it have imposed dozens of conditions on migrants to Italy, in effect turning them into provisional guest workers. Among other conditions, children born on Italian soil of migrant parents do not gain Italian citizenship.
The St. Papers theme is related to the "St. Precario" campaign, which advances the rights of "precarious" labour — those thrown into part-time and casual work by the roll-back of wages and conditions in the past decade.
The rally was part of a growing multi-focused resistance to the Berlusconi government. Two days before the St. Papers rally, thousands rallied in Popolo Square, wearing purple scarves and banners, as part of the "Violet" movement. This aims to unite a broad anti-Berlusconi coalition.
Students rallied on the morning of March 1 to protest new laws limiting migrant presence in schools to 30% of total intake.
Figures in the opposition Democratic Party expect Berlusconi and his People of Freedom party to campaign strongly on an anti-migrant platform in regional assembly elections in late March — particularly as Berlusconi's sales-pitch as an efficient, "post-ideological" leader is wearing increasingly thin.