Just my Observation

As previously mentioned in my second post related to Napoli, I witnessed a protest in front of Gambrinus regarding unfair wages. I would like to clarify that it was predominantly taxi drivers (and now farmers are joining) with strikes that are still ongoing. I bring this up again because of the protests occurring in Rome which I and another classmate became a witness to today. Upon coming back from a day of cooking classes, talking books, and making a friend from London (the following will be discussed in a collective post about Rome); I've come to learn that a result of these protests is the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Like the last post where I brought up the protests, I will make the following statement: I am no expert in political affairs with Italy by any means. Because I am not educated enough on these topics, I cannot make an educated or informed opinion. Especially because of polarizing discussions I've seen online regarding the resignation and I can't claim tweets as justifiable research.

What I will say about this is that I find it interesting to be in Italy while protests are occurring. Any time that I've seen protests in action in Italy, I haven't seen any violence from the police (neither in person nor on social media) (also it goes without saying but just so we're all clear and on the same page, a friendly reminder: ACAB). I know when I was in Napoli and I saw police grabbing helmets and shields my immediate response was to leave ASAP mainly because of how protests look in the States. In addition, it's something that will be considered a major part of history and while seeing history in action is scary as hell, I do find it to be wildly interesting if we even make it through it. Even more so when Studying Abroad and another country's history is playing before your very eyes. Even if I don't fully know the significance of these protests just yet or even how the Resignation of Mario Draghi will play out, I think it's mind-blowing to see the history play out.

Another thing I wanted to discuss relates back to a conversation that I had with my new friend from London. A discussion about how different the news looks in the States compared to Italy (and in the UK from my understanding). I talked about how in the United States certain things don't make the news, specifically how certain events in countries are not even discussed or given airtime (an example I used was the little to no news coverage of the Israeli Conflict which saw additional traction last year (if I'm remembering this correctly) compared to Ukraine which received a lot of coverage. Both are absolutely tragic.). This came as a huge shock to my new friend from across the pond I can't exactly blame her. I have learned so much news about other countries just by riding the metro in Rome and looking at their TVs. I genuinely have no clue if the news I'm seeing on the Metro is even covered or discussed in the States. But I wouldn't be shocked if it wasn't. Or at the very least not for nearly as long or as in-depth as it deserves. I even went as far as to call the way News is delivered in the US as pretty self-absorbed.

But, hey, that's just my observation. :)