Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo by Peter T. Schneider;Jane C. Schneider

Author:Peter T. Schneider;Jane C. Schneider [Schneider, Peter T. Schneider;Jane C.]
Language: zho
Format: epub
Published: 2010-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 13. Children in front of the plaque commemorating the assassination of General dalla Chiesa on the eleventh anniversary of his killing, September 3, 1993. Photograph by Alessandro Fucarini, Labruzzo Agenzia, Palermo.

The Orlando administration created a new department of "Parks and Livability" and appointed Green movement activist and photographer Letizia Battaglia to be its commissioner. Many have commented on her extraordinary energy and good-humored but gutsy engagement with the city (see, for example, Stille 1999). During the day she surveyed parks and public spaces, and on some nights she followed the trucks of the sanitation workers, long reputed for spending more time off the job than on it. Sometimes she would personally engage the errant city workers; at other times she urged the police to enforce the work rules. In her travels, she intercepted children throwing cans on the street when they could have been putting them in containers, encouraged trattoria owners to move tables outside for tourists, and complained to unlicensed vendors about their clutter. Clearly one person could not reverse the effects of decades of corrupt urban administration single-handedly, but her escapades made a visible difference and attracted much public attention. Even the Giornale di Sicilia, generally reticent when it came to antimafia, published stories about her beach cleanups and tree plantings. In Alongi's words, Battaglia "knew no procedures or rules, but ... paradoxically this served as a stimulus to her commitment and willingness to take risks. She was ever on the run, recuperating `green spaces' compromised by the neglect of past administrations." Citizens, so accustomed to bureaucratic torpor, were waking up (Alongi 1997: zz4).

Another source of optimism was the energy that flowed from a handful of social centers in poor neighborhoods where activist priests, helped by lay as well as Catholic volunteers, got children to burn their toy guns in great bonfires and organized them to enjoy unprecedented excursions and sports meets. In 1987, we followed a summer festival at Cosimo Scordato's San Saverio Social Center, aimed at children aged six to thirteen. The children were not lectured to or monitored; instead, their energies were channeled by volunteers trained to integrate moral lessons with art, sports, and theater (Terranova 1993-94).9 The center itself is testimony to this nondidactic approach, decorated from floor to ceiling in nearly every room by colorful children's art with antimafia content: slogans and symbols disparage guns, violence, drugs, and crime while praising peace.

In 1987, the year we witnessed the festival, 6o children participated in the center's activities; in 1988, there were 170. The increase reflected the previous year's TV coverage of the centerpiece event, mock Olympic Games that, interspersed with displays of art work, songs, puppet shows, and dramatic performances, some of them in Sicilian dialect, went on for four days. Twelve teams of about sixteen children each, close in age but of mixed gender, competed in the various races, each being managed by two to three counselors who helped develop a team spirit, aided by colorcoded banners and tee shirts. The counselors said the games were to have fun, not to win; there would be cups for cooperation, not victory.

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