Every so often seems that Italy can wake up from its heavy slumber. These days the story of Stefano Cucchi led to a general awareness on a basic principle in a state of law: that a person should not die in jail without reason. Images of the murder of Camorra in Naples have shown to all the mundane simplicity with which mafia kills in the street in broad daylight.
It's possible that the reaction of citizens to these and other events is the beginning of an awakening of civic conscience that is missing in this country. Because ours is a country where the mafias do what they want when they want, as at their home, even if the lifestyle of organized crime is not compatible with that of honest people. A country where too often the police commit abuses and unjustifiable violence. A country where politicians only think about their own personal gain and those of their friends and not about the good of the community. A country where politicians are not required to have a basic moral stature and dare to attack with impunity the judiciary. A country with freedom of the press in the hands of one person, and a few others. A country increasingly inhuman and racist. A country where ships laden with toxic waste are sunk off the coast. A country where are built incinerators and factories that kill people and are said to be necessary, and now they also want to build nuclear plants without any serious guarantee on how the waste will be disposed of. A country where floods and earthquakes are always tragedies because the territory is already devastated before the disaster by building abuses. A country of corrupted and recommended, illegal employment, gray areas, illegality. A country that despises and destroys its schools and universities. A country that is destroying a generation of workers with precarious jobs.
It's a list that could go on, because ours is a country with no social conscience, with no real certainty in the law, which never asks for the accountability of political and economic powers and never force them to answer for their mistakes. There have been other times when this country seemed on the verge of waking up, to have a social conscience. There was the Unification, the Resistance, the 68. Even in 1992 citizens seemed ready to rebel against a corrupt and compromised political class and the ferocious violence of the Mafia. But after these moments of awakening everything goes back as before, the country goes back to sleep, returns to its terrible torpor, its terrible silence. Dreams of being a country where things are not so bad and it's only a dangerous illusion, because things are going badly and so always went.
Some faint signs of waking up every so often is not enough to change things. Now thanks to internet sites and blogs, the truth can be heard much easier than in time past and all citizens may be able to make their voices heard. But it is always necessary that the civil conscience of this country wake up at last, to not fall asleep ever again.
Francesco Defferrari
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