The anti-fascist militia Arditi del Popolo (AdP), was founded in Rome in late June 1921. Faced with a growing threat of armed fascist gangs, regular people gathered around the AdP defense organization and managed to keep streets of cities and neighborhoods safe from the domestic terror squads known as “blackshirts”. Its first action was July 19 in the port city of Piombino, in Tuscany, Italy.

Sung to the tune of Giovinezza (fascist party hymn):

We beat back the violence
of mercenary fascism
all to arms, on the calvary
of human redemption.

This eternal youth
renews itself in faith
for a people who demand
equality and liberty.

Two days after Piombino, at Sarzana, a column of five hundred fascists marched to free their captured leader Renato Ricci. A dozen Carabinieri fired on the right wing extremists approaching the railway station, and AdP fighters joined by local workers and citizens hunted the survivors on the run through the countryside. The chief of staff of the defeated right-wing terror squad reflected:

The squad, so long accustomed to meeting an enemy who nearly always ran away, or offered feeble resistance, could not, and did not know how to defend themselves.

Food for thought.

Michael Rosen reads his poem Don’t Mention the Children

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Thirty of the list’s 50 victims were children, hardly any with listed identities. The inscription explains that “before 1850, it was common for Cherokee children to be unnamed…”