 On Friday, February 18th, tens of thousands of students hit the streets in over 40 cities across Italy. They were protesting the flawed policies on public education followed by the Mario Draghi government. The protests were organized mainly by student and youth organizations and leftist groups, including Pote Real Popolo, USB Italia, the Communist Youth Front and Italian Communist Youth Federation. In recent times, Italian students have been protesting across the country, demanding safer schools, higher investments in public education, and free public transport. The protests intensified last month following the death of Lorenzo Parelli, a student who died in a workplace accident while on an internship. The latest mobilization came after 16-year-old Giuseppe Linoce died on February 15th in yet another work-related accident. The protests blamed a 2015 mandatory government internship policy for the deaths of the students. We are here today to support the student struggle against Alternanza Scuola Lavoro, that is a sort of trainship during school hours, and during the last two months two kids died during Alternanza Scuola Lavoro. So we are here to say no to this, but there were already a lot of mobilization and demonstration during the past few months with the students, but the response of our politics is repression. And in a country that values democracy, this is not an acceptable response, because we want to talk, we want our politics to hear as, hear what are we saying, and also because this is not only a student struggle, it is also a worker struggle about the conditions that we are living. They also denounced this spike in unemployment and government insensitivity towards schools amid the COVID-19 crisis. The protests can name the policies on public education being implemented under the influence of big business led by the General Confederation of Italian Industry or Confindustria. In several cities, students march to the offices of the government, ruling political parties and Confindustria. The students have also called for the abolition of compulsory internships and resignations of Prime Minister Draghi along with the Education Minister and Interior Minister. High school students in Italy have to take up a mandatory internship where the student needs to spend a minimum number of education hours from 200 to 400 a year working without salary in private companies. Experts have noted that even after seven years of implementation of these mandatory internships, they have not brought about any improvements for students and young workers. At the end of 2021, the unemployment rate of those aged 125 increased to almost 30%, double compared to other EU 27 countries. Various forms of precarity such as irregular work, low wages, violence and harassment at the workplace affect one out of two workers under 35. Students across Italy were pushed into a breaking point by the devastating COVID-19 crisis. In 2020, it was estimated that 13.1% of young people did not finish school and left early. According to reports, a number of students who made it to graduation but acquired only a part of the expected skills in high school also increased. Various progressive student youth groups from Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Brazil, Pakistan, Turkey, Palestine, Portugal, Belgium and other countries also extended the solidarity to the protesting students of Italy.