Romadicebasta protest at Campidoglio attracts 10,000 Romans.

Rome's mayor Virginia Raggi has dismissed the estimated 10,000 protestors who showed up at city hall as the "old guard of the Partito Democratico", the centre-left party of her predecessor Ignazio Marino.
The non-political sit-in was held on 27 October in response to the shortcomings of the capital's administration in sectors such as rubbish collection, the maintenance of roads and parks, and the public transport system.
Raggi, who was attending a meeting in the coastal district of Ostia at the time, did not mince her words in her lengthy response to the peaceful protest, which she posted on her Facebook page.
She noted among the crowd "the same tried and tired faces, the same white-haired heads" [of the PD]; "ladies with handbags costing €1,000 worn as if they were Che Guevara t-shirts and - inevitable accessory - poodles on a leash (pedigree obviously)."
The mayor also took aim at "orphans of Mafia Capitale" - the 2014 case involving criminal infiltration of city hall - as well as the "pseudo intellectuals who have never taken a bus in their life."
The mayor went on to list the achievements of her populist Movimento 5 Stelle administration in her almost two and half years in office. Her response, which is causing no little controversy, has so far attracted more than 6,000 comments and in excess of 8,000 shares on Facebook.
The protest came at the end of a week in which the city had to deal with a teenage girl found dead in S. Lorenzo after being drugged and gang-raped, the collapse of an escalator at Repubblica metro station injuring dozens of Russian football fans, and a strike which caused widespread problems for the capital's already-troubled public transport and waste collection sectors.

Photo La Stampa