The 25th of May is the date we have been waiting for, is finally approaching! We set off from Zattere, a symbolic place in the fight against large cruise ships, heading towards Porto Marghera, where the cruise ships thought they would be undisturbed. Despite a first important victory in 2021 when, after 10 years protests, cruise ships were finally banned from Venice, the struggle is not over. Indeed, the unwelcome presence of cruise ships, still threatens our Lagoon. The idea of the companies, the port, the municipality, the region, and the
government is to make the Marghera docks (in the Venetian mainland) permanent. Not only that, they want to bring the ships back into the city by moving millions of tonnes of toxic sludge, through
massive dredging, further tampering with a part of the Lagoon already historically strained by a century of unsustainable industrial policies. Moreover, this is an illegal plan, against what was
established by the Draghi Government, which indicated the construction of an offshore port as the definitive solution. As our history shows, the city and the Lagoon are made of the same substance. You cannot defend the former and leave the latter at the mercy of speculators and their greed for profit. The fight to defend
the social biodiversity of the city is no different from that to defend the biodiversity of the water city. Thanks to the contribution of Taring Padi and Powernotte who worked with dozen of activists at Sale Docks last April, the parade will be led by a large aquatic creature, a spirit animal and a protector of the Lagoon. The artists also produced a series of large cardboard puppets and masks that will ply the
waters together with activists.

Using the props created during the workshop with Taring Padi, Powernotte and the Climate Justice League, No Grandi Navi (No big Ships) demonstration on Saturday, May 25th. The Committee against big cruise ships of Venice (Comitato NO Grandi Navi) fights for the defence of the Lagoon of Venice from extractivist projects and the presence of unsustainable mega cruises. On Saturday May 25th a demonstration on the water will leave Venice, pointing towards an island of the Lagoon, with the goal of temporarily occupying it, as a symbolic act of liberation from cruise ships and all the linked projects tampering with the fragile local ecosystem. All the props and images produced during the workshop will empower the demonstration and will lately be part of an exhibition at Sale Docks.

The committee No Big Cruiseship (Comitato No Grandi Navi) The battle for the expulsion of large ships from the San Marco Basin and the lagoon must be participatory and involve as many movements and citizens as possible, from Venice and Mestre. For this reason, the coordination of the associations that has restarted the battle in recent years have decided to change their skin, to give a precise signal of novelty and discontinuity with the past.

The movement changes its name: it is now called “No Grandi Navi Committee – Lagoon Bene Comune”, where the reference to the lagoon is a precise choice of content, because Venice does not exist without a healed and balanced lagoon that defends it. For this reason, it is not enough to be satisfied with not seeing the large ships in the San Marco Basin or with seeing half of them: cruise tourism must be expelled from the lagoon to allow the start of real hydrodynamic and morphological recovery interventions;
The movement was born on a common platform of analysis and requests, summarized in the “What We Ask” page. For further information, we recommend reading our “White Paper”. Each individual member of the Committee will maintain their own autonomy of initiatives, as long as they do not conflict with the freely accepted common platform.