The name of the Last Generation is now familiar, given the international scope of a movement that in recent years has attracted public attention through various demonstration actions with a strong media impact: road blocks, protests in museums, raids on luxury restaurants. Each intervention had the aim of drawing attention to the climate crisis and growing social inequalities, as well as denouncing the slowness of governments and large companies in the face of the environmental emergency.
Activists deliberately choose symbolic places, often perceived as inviolable, to denounce the priority given to profit over life. The message is clear: the current economic and production model not only contributes to the destruction of ecosystems, but also perpetuates exploitative conditions that affect the most vulnerable people.
If in the past the most striking initiatives had concentrated on elite contexts – such as Carlo Cracco’s famous restaurant in Milan, the scene of various demonstration actions – today the movement is changing strategy. The new form of protest is aimed at an everyday place frequented by millions of people: the supermarket.
The Saturday boycott
Starting from Saturday 11 October, Ultima Generazione has started a national campaign to boycott large-scale retail trade (GDO). The invitation is simple and direct: avoid shopping in supermarkets on Saturdays, the day on which most Italian families stock up on basic necessities. Activists suggest instead turning to small shops, local markets and local producers, realities that embody a more just and sustainable economy.
Behind the lights and tidy shelves of the large shopping centres, explain the promoters of the initiative, enormous profits, systematic waste and exploitative practices are hidden which end up damaging both producers and consumers.
The movement accuses large-scale retail trade of representing one of the most evident symbols of a distorted economic system, in which the final price paid by the customer does not reflect the real value of the work nor the sustainability of the supply chains.
An economic and political protest
Ultima Generazione accompanies the boycott with a precise political message:
Every day our money goes where we don’t want it: the government spends billions on weapons, while healthcare, education and essential services remain underfunded. Italy becomes complicit in wars and genocides, fueling an economy of death, while our salaries remain stagnant and prices rise.
With this declaration, the movement links the daily economic issue – the spending that increasingly weighs on family budgets – to a broader political framework, in which the country’s priorities are questioned.
The request is clear: reduce VAT on essential goods, to lighten the cost of living and restore oxygen to families. At the same time, the aim is to promote a fairer economic model, which favors direct relationships with producers and strengthens the local social and commercial fabric.
A gesture that wants to become collective
The debut of the initiative was accompanied by public actions in various Italian cities: shared tables, music, moments of sociality and discussion. Events that transformed the protest into an opportunity for meeting and collective reflection on the value of daily spending.
The movement invites us not to underestimate the individual power of the consumer. Every euro spent represents a political choice, an act that can strengthen a system based on profit and consumption or fuel a network of alternatives based on solidarity and respect for the Planet.
Ultima Generazione announces that the boycott will continue every Saturday, with the aim of transforming this practice into a widespread and shared habit. The intent is clear: to make Saturday without a supermarket a form of constant pressure on government and businesses, capable of shifting the public debate and orienting collective behavior towards more sustainable models.
An apparently simple gesture, such as giving up weekly shopping in large shopping centres, thus becomes a political act, a stance that aims to put people, work and the planet back at the centre.
