00:00Tension on the streets
00:28of Olympic host Milan, what began as a mass protest over housing and the environment
00:34exploded into chaos. Smoke bombs, flares, stones, and police answering with water cannons.
00:49The Winter Games are meant to showcase unity. Instead, Italy's financial capital became
00:55a battleground between demonstrators and riot squads.
01:04An estimated 10,000 people flooded Milan streets on the first full day of the Milano-Cortina
01:11Winter Olympics. Grassroots unions, housing groups, and environmental activists united
01:17under one message. These games, they say, are hurting the city and the mountains. But as
01:23night fell, a small group broke away, launching fireworks, hurling stones, and clashing with
01:30police lines. Officers in riot shields pushed back, unleashing water cannons to disperse the
01:39crowd.
01:46Authorities were already on edge. Just a week earlier in Turin, a hard-left rally termed violent,
01:53more than 100 officers injured, dozens arrested. For Milan, security had been tightened. But
02:00it wasn't enough to stop the anger boiling over.
02:08The protesters' grievances run deep. They say the Olympics have driven rents sky-high, pushing
02:15ordinary residents out of their own city.
02:21Others point to the mountains, where trees have been felled and artificial snow is being
02:29pumped onto warming slopes.
02:33Today, we are taking to the streets to protest against the Olympics, yet another major project
02:41that they want to make seem like an opportunity for all citizens and students, when in reality,
02:47it is nothing more than financial speculation, property speculation, and overbuilding.
02:53Let's take back the city, free the mountains, one banner read. Another warned, the Olympics
03:00are drying me out, a reference to the massive water use for snowmaking.
03:07Protesters carried cardboard trees, laying them on the ground like a forest cut down. Symbolic
03:13victims of a new bobsleigh track that critics call ecological madness.
03:21There are various reasons for the protest, both political and economic. In particular, today
03:28we are here in the square with these cardboard cutouts of larch trees, representing the 800 larch
03:34trees cut down in Cortina to build a bobsleigh track that we all know will no longer be used
03:41after the Olympics, as bobsleigh is not a national sport. It will certainly be another wasteful
03:48construction project that will then be abandoned, obviously at the expense of public money.
03:55Organizers insist the Milano Cortina Games are sustainable, but activists argue the opposite.
04:02Billions spent on roads and venues scattered across the Alps, while local communities see little
04:08benefit. They say Milan has become a Disneyland for tourists, glittering on the surface, unaffordable underneath.
04:20Amid the chants, Palestinian flags were raised, linking local anger to global causes. Police watched
04:28from helmeted lines, wary of another eruption. Italy wanted an Olympic celebration. Instead, the world saw tear gas,
04:36water cannons, and a city divided over what these games really cost.
04:47As competitions continue in the arenas, the streets outside tell a different story,
04:52of residents fighting for homes, mountains, and a future they fear is slipping away.
05:08The world saw a lot of people in the arenas, the streets outside tell a different story.
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