On July, 2021, the GKN manufacturing plant in Campi Bisenzio, near Florence, Italy, closed. Without forewarning, more than 400 workers have been fired over an email. But the plant is one of the strongest unionized in Italy and the workers block the closure of the factory. Through legal process the firing were revoked as illegitimate but the mobilization had already started and the struggle of the workers managed to mobilize associations and citizens for months. After two years, many demonstrations, some concerts and the first working class literature festival in Italy we came to ask... how did they do it? How, in a country with a dramaticly low electoral turnout, in an area where few knew there was a factory, the "Insorgiamo" factory collective reached such a local participation?
Speaking with the collective we'll try to follow the path that has allowed such a space for participation. A participation born with themes of work rights and clearly expanded to touch other realities but astonishingly connected with complex political and class issues. How have to workers conveyed their positions and gained a weight and voice? And what role have had social media, with their preference for images rather that text, polarizing tendencies and isolated bubbles?
Beside the everlasting interest for any discipline to understand how to involve and be undestood by the public, it looks like this story travels in a stubborn and contrary direction to the common narrative of disinterest and collapsing participation in the informational capitalism era.
