22/02/2005
stampa
invia
A huge demonstration, enormous. Sad, as well. Sad, with that gray Roman
sky that let us dream for a moment when the sun poked through, but then
closed up again, even spitting down a few big raindrops from above. An
important demonstration, though. Very important, because it was so big.
No one knows how big, but it was good to hear Berlusconi’s channel Italia 1 estimate two hundred thousand people. If we were actually more like half a million,
so much the better.
It was important because it was organized so quickly, all in only five days. And important because of what it shows about the people of Italy’s desire for peace.The demonstration was for a woman prisoner in a far-off place, a woman who for some has become the perfect image of weakness. Her voice, in the video shown in recent days, was weak, desperate. A voice that told us, “Go ahead!” Do something, you can do something, you have both the responsibility and the strength.An almost spontaneous demonstration rather than a march, put together by a marginal newspaper, one that’s always in the wrong, with a readership that adds up to less than one tenth of the numbers that attended the demonstration.
No structure, no preparation.
It was more than a demonstration, more than a march: it was a slap in the face, or, depending on where you stood, a roundhouse punch at the political class in Italy. The class in Italy that rinses its mouth with words about the sacredness of life before it sends soldiers into slaughter, the class that wraps itself in the rainbow flag of peace only when it’s forced to, but tears up the Constitution when it holds power, and refuses to discuss it when it stands in opposition.
It’s that political class that once again showed that it exists light years away from the country itself. Every one of them, without exception.
The demonstration was also a slap in the face to all those who claim to speak in the name of peace or in the name of those who want peace. Those who fill their mouths with words that manage only to slow down the largest mass movement since the end of World War II.
Those who want peace might indeed wish to find someone to represent them, someone capable of transforming into action, into law (into politics, that is), this enormous “No” to war that expresses itself at every chance, whether in joy, anger, or desperation. The people of peace need someone like that, just as it needs peace itself. And Giuliana Sgrena needs that desperately too, Giuliana and all those who are close to her in these days.
Let’s make it illegal, this war and all the others, just as the Italian Constitution says, just as History itself tells us, just as Giuliana’s desperation tells us, hers and that of the millions of people like her, or with her, who are forced to bear war’s devastation.
This is our one true duty.
stampainvia
For the hostages, against the war
On Saturday 19th February, some 500,000 people joined the demonstration in Rome, asking the release of the hostages in Iraq and the end of the war.
A huge demonstration, enormous. Sad, as well. Sad, with that gray Roman
sky that let us dream for a moment when the sun poked through, but then
closed up again, even spitting down a few big raindrops from above. An
important demonstration, though. Very important, because it was so big.
No one knows how big, but it was good to hear Berlusconi’s channel Italia 1 estimate two hundred thousand people. If we were actually more like half a million,
so much the better. It was important because it was organized so quickly, all in only five days. And important because of what it shows about the people of Italy’s desire for peace.The demonstration was for a woman prisoner in a far-off place, a woman who for some has become the perfect image of weakness. Her voice, in the video shown in recent days, was weak, desperate. A voice that told us, “Go ahead!” Do something, you can do something, you have both the responsibility and the strength.An almost spontaneous demonstration rather than a march, put together by a marginal newspaper, one that’s always in the wrong, with a readership that adds up to less than one tenth of the numbers that attended the demonstration.
No structure, no preparation.
It was more than a demonstration, more than a march: it was a slap in the face, or, depending on where you stood, a roundhouse punch at the political class in Italy. The class in Italy that rinses its mouth with words about the sacredness of life before it sends soldiers into slaughter, the class that wraps itself in the rainbow flag of peace only when it’s forced to, but tears up the Constitution when it holds power, and refuses to discuss it when it stands in opposition.
It’s that political class that once again showed that it exists light years away from the country itself. Every one of them, without exception.
The demonstration was also a slap in the face to all those who claim to speak in the name of peace or in the name of those who want peace. Those who fill their mouths with words that manage only to slow down the largest mass movement since the end of World War II.
Those who want peace might indeed wish to find someone to represent them, someone capable of transforming into action, into law (into politics, that is), this enormous “No” to war that expresses itself at every chance, whether in joy, anger, or desperation. The people of peace need someone like that, just as it needs peace itself. And Giuliana Sgrena needs that desperately too, Giuliana and all those who are close to her in these days.
Let’s make it illegal, this war and all the others, just as the Italian Constitution says, just as History itself tells us, just as Giuliana’s desperation tells us, hers and that of the millions of people like her, or with her, who are forced to bear war’s devastation.
This is our one true duty.
Maso Notarianni
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