Venetians, with the support of many other Italians, have taken the canals with their boats in sustained action of blockade of large cruise ships, which damage the lagoon and pose a serious risk for the city itself (any accident would be a major catastrophe).
A related claim was to oppose the increased military encroachment of the city.
Last week, they marched by land to the boarding docks but were violently repressed by the Military Police (Carabinieri), which used batons and rubber bullets against life jackets and toy rubber boats. So they took to the water, as their ancestors used to.
It’s reported that every year the big cruise boats pass right through the middle of the most delicate city in the world around 3,500 times, with vibrations so strong that residents in the nearest houses have strengthened their walls with glued canvas.
In addition to the danger to the city’s buildings and infrastructure, the boats are a huge threat to the health of the inhabitants themselves. Indeed, each and every cruise boat produces the equivalent of 14,000 cars’ polluting gases. It’s as though the traffic of an entire city crosses Venice several times a day, every day of the year. This pollution is making an already compromised situation much worse, as the chemical plants of the nearby town of Porto Marghera are already poisoning the lagoon, its environment and its people.
Just like the proverbial elephant in the china shop.
Source: Struggles in Italy.
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