From the Italian port of Brindisi, activists from Italy’s Albanian diaspora and from Global Sumud Flotilla Italy will set sail for Albania on 20 August, travelling across the Adriatic to join the Flamingo Revolution, the protest movement against luxury developments backed by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The mission is organised by the Italian-Albanian collective Mesdhe (“Mediterranean” in Albanian) and the Albanian pro-Palestine collective Palestina e Lire (“Free Palestine” in Albanian), together with the Italian branch of the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international civil society initiative aimed at breaking Israel's naval blockade of Gaza and delivering humanitarian aid to the enclave.
It will link the two Adriatic shores with a three‑boat flotilla at a moment when activists in Albania are challenging the privatisation of protected land and the growing influence of foreign investors over the country.
The action was launched on social media on 8 August, and the choice of date and departure point in Brindisi, in the southern region of Puglia, is deeply symbolic for the organisers.
In the 1990s, Puglia became the arrival point for one of the largest mass migrations in recent European history, following the collapse of Albania’s communist regime. On 8 August 1991, the merchant ship Vlora docked in Bari, Puglia’s administrative centre, carrying an estimated 20,000 Albanians in a single journey.
