Their clarification came after reports Wednesday that it would protest the local government allegedly “selling out” the lagoon city centre to the Amazon boss and his bride.
A banner against the wedding was hung from a belltower in Venice last Thursday as protests at his reported “city centre buy-out” for the lavish nuptials with Sanchez gathered pace.
On Thursday, ANPI’s Seven Martyrs group said, “The ANPI of Venice does not intend to prevent Jeff Bezos from getting married in Venice, but expresses once again the reasons for its point of view on the choices of the Administration, on the use of the city, on the commodification, on the privatisation of public spaces, on overtourism, on the large ships and the large events that compress the liveability of the city which is destined, if the trend is not reversed, to an inexorable demographic, social and economic decline.”
“All this does not distract us from the most dramatic issues of today,” it continued, “From the issue of peace to the issue of rearmament, to the drama of migration, to the fight against the security decree and in support of workers’ rights on which we continue to be scrupulously present as required by the constitution.
“We consistently defend Venice, the city in which we live, to prevent real estate and financial speculation [and] neoliberalism from suppressing it as a place of life, making it a showcase and stage for the events of the world’s powerful while its inhabitants are chased away and young people are denied the right to housing.
“For this reason, we reiterate the reasons for our opposition to a use of the city that mortifies its inhabitants, their right to inhabit it and live with dignity,” the statement concluded.
ANSA
