At the Tpo social center, 80 associations and movements for Europe from below. And with Ukraine

Katarina Jeremic is part of the Serbian collective SviCé and says that "people were living in a bubble and at some point they realized they were no longer safe, because besides the Novi Sad canopy, schools and public buildings could collapse too. Corruption was everywhere, people were exasperated. Enough is enough." She is an architect, 32 years old: "It's strange to find ourselves on the side of power," she says. "If I had to give advice to the Italian movements, I'd say: listen to the young people." And indeed there were three hundred of them today, Saturday the 14th, at the Tpo, boys and girls from all over Europe, from more than eighty movements and collectives, coming from Spain, Portugal, France, Sweden, Belgium, Croatia, Albania, Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia. All there to imagine a Europe beyond the West, as the manifesto at the entrance reads. "We want to build a politically free space," says Giulia Sezzi, of the Tpo, "different both from the European Union as we know it and from the far-right Europe. Autonomous from the West and from NATO. And paradoxically driven more by what was always considered its periphery, the East." And on military aid to Ukraine she says: "We agree that attacked societies have the right to defend themselves." The next meeting "to build a Europe from below" will be that of the European Council, to be held in March, in Rome. Around, you can also spot an old "grey panther" like Luca Casarini (his own definition). Then there are the Iranian activists from Brussels, the Swedes, Gresa Hasa who comes from the Albanian flamingo revolution and was invited by city councilor Detjon Begaj. There is also Renato Lideo, in the front row: "It's the first initiative," he says, "that raises the Europe question at the level of movements." (eikon) At 7 pm there is the debate on Ukraine and the room is full. A group of young people representing various wings of the left recount that they raised 1,800 euros at a dinner at the Cunie popolari in Bologna for an international convoy in support of Ukraine. "Unfortunately," says one of them, Cristian Bako, "there are still exponents of the Stalinist left who consider it unjust to support Ukraine, so it's really nice that the Tpo organized an event like this." Oleksandr Kyselov comes from Donetsk: "In Ukraine," he recounts, "there is no heating, you wake up every night with the raids, living under bombardment is a struggle even with your psychological well-being, some people have emigrated, others are in the army, some live locked in their homes because they don't want to be drafted, many have lost their jobs because entire factories are destroyed, people live with a strong sense of social injustice. In the middle of the war they had raised the price of transport." Certainly, he admits, reconstruction must also be discussed, "but it will cost, and how can we trust Europe if it struggles even to give us military support? You here have parties, unions, ask how your money is being spent, whether they use it to support oligarchic regimes or those fighting in Ukraine." Mira, of Solidarity Collectives, blurts out: "In Italy there were those who said it was right to bomb us because we had a right-wing government, but that wasn't true. And then, what government do you have? And would it be right to bomb you? I hope to reach a point where I no longer have to explain why it is right to support us." A Ukrainian activist, Ilona, recounts that while she was putting up a flyer to publicize the fundraiser, she was told she should have put it next to the one for Mein Kampf: "In Bologna there are also people who think like that. Fortunately, not here." And, it would seem, not in this nascent, very young Europe of movements either.