Over the weekend of January 21-22, the third national meeting of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel was held in Bologna, Italy. Roughly 80 activists from over 20 Italian cities representing groups, associations and political parties throughout Italy participated. The scope of the meeting was to evaluate the progress of ongoing campaigns, establish strategic objectives and shared work methods, exchange information between the various Italian groups working on BDS and reassess organizational aspects of the BDS movement in Italy.
The atmosphere of the two-day meeting was one of enthusiasm and collaboration, where information and practices were shared and future strategies and objectives of the movement were outlined. The four most prevalent national campaigns, Stop Agrexco, Stop Sodastream, Stop That Train and academic and cultural boycotts, were examined. For each campaign, material, strategies, legal implications and a specific action plan were identified. It was decided to temporarily suspend the campaign against Agrexco pending clarification on the future of the company, which was ordered into liquidation in 2011. In the months ahead, work will be carried out nationally on the three remaining campaigns, for which a clear action plan was detailed, to be launched in parallel on both the local and national level.