Angelo Avelli knows Milan better than most milanesi. These last three years, he has sped down the Corso Buenos Aires, hauled his bike over the canals of the Navigli, and felt the clambering of the cobblestones surrounding the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana countless times. He is a courier for food delivery platform Just Eat — what Italians call a “rider.”

On March 26, he pushed off from Porta Ticinese, once the gate to a walled city, and headed north toward Porta Garibaldi. Bypassing tourists on Via Dante, this time, he wasn’t in a rush to deliver sushi or a Big Mac, and there was no worry about veering around the city’s buses or taxis. Instead, he was surrounded by a sea of around two hundred of his fellow riders, shouting, “We are not slaves, we are workers!”

“The pedestrians were applauding us, showing us solidarity, and marveling at how large of a crowd we were. We started a spontaneous picket, blocking restaurants from making deliveries. The procession got larger and larger, and a lot of workers left their shift and joined us,” Avelli told me. He emphasized that the strike, which took place in thirty-five other Italian cities, was broader than food delivery, aimed at the gig economy at large. “One of our other slogans is ‘Not for us, but for everyone,’ because the struggle of riders is not just about getting a contract, it’s resistance against the new norms of work that abuse the independence of people, against the absence of rights for precarious workers.”