“I Am Open”: 50,000 Italian Restaurant Owners Plan to Ignore Lockdown – Huge act of civil disobedience plans to conduct business as usual in spite of “anti-Covid” measures

OFF-GUARDIAN

Today – Friday 15th January – over 50,000 restaurants are planning to open, an act of mass civil disobedience against “anti-Covid” lockdown measures which have massively hurt the restaurant business, especially small family-owned businesses.

Spreading through social media under the hashtag #IoApro (“I am opening”), the movement is the largest country-wide act of civil disobedience since lockdowns began.

Italian opposition MP Vittorio Sgarbi has backed the movement, saying in an interview:

Open up, & don’t worry, in the end we will make them eat their fines.

Italy’s government is already facing internal conflict and crisis, an early election is a possibility. (ER: We have attempted to address the Italian government’s problems through articles on how it has been caught interfering in the US presidential elections. See here and here.)

A similar movement already started in Mexico on January 12th, when hundreds of restaurant owners gathered to protest the lockdowns:

The “I am Open” protest is spreading across Europe as well, with variants already taking hold in German-speaking Switzerland (#Wirmachenauf) and Poland (#OtwieraMY).

It’s good to be reminded that, no matter how much it looks like the new normal is spreading unopposed, it’s not. People all over the world are resisting where they can. That’s what “Covid Positive” is all about.