Autonomia Operaia

It played an important role in the Italian autonomist movement in the 1970s, alongside earlier organisations such as Potere Operaio, which was created after May 1968, and Lotta Continua.

It also published several newspapers and magazines which were circulated nationally, including Rosso in Milan, I Volsci in Rome, Autonomia in Padua and A/traverso in Bologna.

This repression met with some international protest, in particular from French philosophers Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who also denounced the Italian Communist Party's (PCI) opposition to the University occupation.

On 17 February 1977 Luciano Lama, secretary-general of the CGIL, the trade union closest to the PCI, gave a speech inside the occupied La Sapienza University.

Some of the autonomi decided that the time had come to alzare il livello dello scontro (escalate of the conflict), in other words, to start using firearms.