Chained itinerant anger: 'We are starving'

 The anger of non-food vendors, in the square in Turin for the second consecutive day, is the cry of those who, in the red zone, feel "the last wheel of the wagon". After the sit-in in front of the Prefecture, today it is the turn of the Porta Palazzo market, the most famous in Turin, to host the protest. Markets, street vendors and beaters raise the chains from the wrists up to the height of the neck simulating a hanging. "We'll hold them around here in a little while." The exasperation translates into this sentence and this strong gesture. They will demonstrate to the bitter end to ask to go back to work and "not to starve". Today they are chained in the same place where they have set up their stalls for years, the Porta Palazzo market, to protest against the prohibitions. Goia, Ubat, Aapiscat are some of the acronyms that represent over 11 thousand street vendors in Piedmont. There are those who usually sell, clothes, underwear, which cannot be sold outdoors, but in shops it is. They are desperate, but at the same time determined to fight. They say they are "ready for anything" because if "the government wants to cancel our category we will prevent it", they scream. Other demonstrations, "spontaneous and surprising" - they announce - will be organized in the coming days. "Try to put yourself in our shoes - says a merchant in tears - If your employer arrives one day and tells you that you no longer have a job, what would you do? How would you pay rents and mortgages?". "We no longer know who to turn to," adds a colleague. These are the chains that the government has put in us. "Yesterday the same faces demonstrated in Piazza Castello and a delegation was received by the prefect Claudio Palomba." But now words are of little use - explains Silvano Rittà of the Ambulatory Beaters Union - We live in a state of despair and many of us have our permits expired. To renew them there are those who are paying the installments, but if we do not work and we do not earn we cannot logically pay them 'ste installments. we are spreaders, that by working outdoors there are fewer risks. Why is it not said that in supermarkets, indoors, there are crowds and the risks are very high? - protests Giancarlo Nardozzi, national president of the Goia trade union (Organized Group of Autonomous Enterprises) - They treat us as if we were the last wheel of the wagon, but we too have the right to work. We have empty warehouses or with the stuff from two years ago. Then we go on the internet and see that our own products are being seen. "" Work, work ", they shout, beating the chains. Tomorrow they will be at Porta Palazzo again. Still bound together by chains.