Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The people from Taranto have been
asleep for a long time,
but they have the excuse of the threat of unemployment
and of the normality. That, in here, is:
working at Ilva or in the Navy
and grow up along with the chimneys
that make the air fetid.
Where I live,
I can detect the wind direction
just by the stench that surrounds the neighbourhood.
So, it could be the smell of Ilva, or Cementir,
or Eni, or the dump site.
For me the RIva family is an unwelcome guest.
And I will not ever leave my house for this reason.
I will not ever give them space,
nor the house I live in,
nor the sea, that I love since I was a child.
It is not fair to leave them these sunsets,
it is not fair to leave them the Città Vecchia,
even if it is in a pitiful state.
The people are coming back, are choosing to stay.
Doing so, it is growing a new way of perceiving the city.
It is still in a perceptive level, but...
I mean, a change is long to come.
But the challenge will be how to set
these episodes and changing moments,
and let them be part of everyday life,
hopefully being able to get some work out of them.
A work, that, right now, keeps being
just part of volunteering activities.
For me Ammazza Che Piazza is, in first, a chance for the city.
A chance to reborn.
And, at second,
what Ammazza Che Piazza wants to do is
giving a message of hope.
A hope that this city can change.
Beacuse Ammazza Che Piazza is doing some things
that in the other cities are normal.
Like dog areas, or urban gardens,
that have been made in a pine wood that we did retrain.
Let's say that we are putting ourselves in it.
For a better future for our city.
We do not want to be candidates, we are not mayors, we do not want an award, nothing.
We just want the people to follow us.
And that someday Ammazza Che Piazza would not need to exist any more,
that everyone would be Ammazza Che Piazza, the whole city.
We just want that.
Every person that chose to stay in this city
has a sort of mission.
To make better the world he lives in.
Or, at least, to leave, even if small,
a trace of his passage in this land.
The municipal administration is a little bit deaf and silent.
It seems like they do not listen to the voice that come from below.
Anyway, fortunately, there are some positive examples
that make disappear all of these prejudices.
For example, for the Sustainable Mobility Week,
we shared a big interest by the whole administration.
This should let us think about,
and make us probably understand
that when it is though to have a dialogue with the institutions,
the blames should be shared
between the institutions, but also the associations should understand
that it is not always possible to destroy,
but they should try to build something.
And, clearly, without a political approval,
very often it is impossible to build something.
The idea of Taranto that
is perceived from outside of our city is not truthful.
This is a city that has a great desire for redemption.
It is a city that has given so much to the nation.
We did not ask for the big steel industry.
We did not chose it.
It has been imposed by the government.
And now the government has to solve the problem.
There is a great citizen participation.
There is the will to change this city.
There is a desire to be a non-polluted city.
There is a desire not to cry on ourselves any more.
There is a desire for redemption
moral but also social.
I wish...
we could be able to do what we think.
And what we think it is not cleaning the squares.
We would like to see a different Taranto.
But not only the city, the industry,
the Navy, not just whatever surround us,
but also ourselves people from Taranto.
Because the principal problem
in Taranto is the head of the people.
Ammazza Che Piazza,
in two years,
has been able to infect a bunch of people
and I would like that, during the years, it could infect more and more people
in order to make the things change in an easier way.
This is my hope.
How would you imagine
a city with two seas?
What can NOT be done here?
There is so much, that we should ask ourselves what can NOT be done here,
not what can be done.
And, I think, that what can NOT be done here is pretty clear:
it is not possible to make the same mistakes any more.