Reflections on the Parcours Civique
Since Issey and I both feel like we have had an *amazing* experience at Libera, we thought of summarising and reflecting on our involvement ... in the hope of possibly inspiring other students involved within this student association to follow our same path! Indeed, our mentor is very willing to host another pair of Sciences Po students next year!
What is Libera?
Libera is the biggest anti-mafia association in Italy. It is dedicated to the fight against criminality by being profoundly for social justice, the protection of human rights, transparent politics, and other notions associated with the concept of "democratic legality". Libera believes that opposing the mafia is a social, political, cultural and ethical task, hence carries out a vast variety of projects. The association was founded in 1995 by the priest don Luigi Ciotti. Now under 24/7 protection, Ciotti is known for having launched a popular petition to collect 1 million signatures with the aim of assigning confiscated goods from the mafia to a social cause. This is arguably what Libera is most known for. In fact, the petition led to the concrete result of the 109/96 legislation affirming the social use of confiscated goods from the mafia. This signifies that confiscated goods are given primarily to NGOs, associations, cooperatives active in the area. Nowadays, summer camps are organized within confiscated goods wherein youth help with reconstruction work whilst learning about the mafia.
What tasks were we assigned?
Task 1: Confiscated goods
Our first task concerned the goods confiscated by the mafia as a result of the "La Svolta" trial which ended in 2020. The trial recognized, for the first time, the presence of 'Ndrangheta in the region of Liguria ! This represented a very significant step forward in the history of the fight against the mafia. At first, we tried to collect as much information as possible from the sentences and other documentation released by the courts. However, it was not sufficient as the documentation obtained lacked the addresses of most goods. Hence, we had to directly contact magistrates, different offices...and go through many bureaucratic steps !!! The fact that most addresses could not be found so easily represented the biggest difficulty in our research, but also an absurdity .... an ordinary citizen who happens to walk inside the court, at the time when the addresses of the confiscated goods are being declared, represents no problem whatsoever. However, once declared in court, the addresses are really difficult to obtain thereafter. This made us realize the high inefficiency of Italian courts - legal documents like the ones requested should be accessible to the public. The databases of confiscated goods had not been updated. Nonetheless, we tried to work our way around this challenge with different methods. For example, we worked with an architecture student to find the addresses of goods which we knew the land parcel of, in order to consequently be able to find the exact address through the land registry.
Then, we organised the confiscated goods in excel sheets, for example, based on the location, the degree of confiscation, the type of property, etc. The confiscated goods were mainly based in the cities of Ventimiglia (from Marcianò mafia family), Bordighera (mafia family Pellegrino) and Sanremo. They consisted mainly of apartments, garages and land.
Additionally, we created a virtual map of the confiscated goods. We relied on two different maps. One was the virtual map created by the Boris Giuliano Observatory, in which the goods with known addresses were placed. The second was a more general map which was filled with the goods with unknown addresses, hence the map functioned according to municipality. The scope of these maps was to primarily raise awareness on the presence of such available property, as well as to present to interested associations a clear visual representation. Then, once a specific good will be selected by an association, they themselves will be in charge of obtaining more information on it. Overall, this work took very long to conclude as we encountered many technical difficulties!
The most interactive and fun part was going to see the few confiscated goods which we had the addresses of, with our very own eyes !!! Although we could only visit them from the outside, we took several pictures to place on the virtual maps. It was very fun as we later realized that the exterior of some houses had been completely transformed...and so we struggled to find them!
We concluded our work by writing a full report on our discoveries.
RESOURCES
Requested list of confiscated goods from a police department (in Italian):
The excel sheets:
The Boris Giuliano Observatory virtual map:
http://mafieinliguria.it/beni-confiscati/
The general map:
https://padlet.com/tkhjb5pymj/vz9ffp3ke1h40y4s
Our report (in Italian):
Task 2: Interviews
Through the contacts of our mentor, we organized interviews with different people, such as the vice-mayor of Sanremo, Costanza Pireri, and a "collaborator of justice", Rocco Mangiardi. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to hold interviews with important people involved in the fight against the mafia because we viewed the parcours civique also a time for us to prepare material for the student association's upcoming year. Indeed, we were thinking of sharing the precious insights acquired from the interviews with the students of the association.
Task 3: Conferences
Furthermore, Issey and I were invited to participate in a few conferences held via zoom. One in particular certainly broadened our understanding of the mafia phenomenon and the methods used to fight it. Its topic concerned the debate of whether or not life imprisonment should be abolished. It is interesting to note how the conference was organized following the news that a very important mafia leader, Giovanni Brusca, sentenced to life imprisonment, was released recently for turning into a "collaborator of justice", thus an informer. Brusca was responsible for the terrible assassination of the magistrate Giovanni Falcone. Amongst other things, he was also guilty of dissolving the child of an enemy mafia family in acid, in order to leave no trace of his death behind. He was even nicknamed "u verru", the pig in a derogatory sense, by Cosa nostra itself!
On the one hand, people like the founder of Libera, Don Ciotti, sustain that reduced life sentences should be possible. This is because prisons hold an educative purpose. Additionally, the majority of the knowledge the anti-mafia has on the nature and workings of the mafia derives directly from repentant mafia men that turn into collaborators of justice. More importantly, the notable magistrate Giovanni Falcone himself had imposed a law in 1991 asserting the right of reduced life imprisonment to incentivize the growth of "collaborators of justice". Hence, a political debate in Italy was soon sparked as to whether such law should be amended.
On the other hand, opposers of this law argue questions such as:
- 1) Can someone who committed such atrocious acts (multiple homicides) ever really feel remorseful? What if he returns to offend?
- 2) When finally caught, should one of the most important leaders of the mafia ever be released from prison?
- 3) How can one be certain that the repentant really deserved reduced prison time? More specifically, how can one be certain that a collaborator of justice really confesses everything they know?
- 4) What about justice to the families of the victims of mafia? Their fear, anger and pain?
RESOURCES
Article (in Italian):
Articles (in English):
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57317220
- https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/world/mobster-s-release-brings-criticism-of-italian-policy-on-informers.html
Task 4: "Anemmu"
"Anemmu" is a social project aimed at reintegrating convicted minors into society. Some do community & service at Libera. We met them a few times to talk and get to know each other. They participated in some of our activities, such as the workshop festival.
Task 5: Workshop for Scambi's 1st edition Festival
The last task was the biggest of all. Scambi is the name of a workshop festival organized by an association aiming at social promotion, Oltre, meaning "beyond" in Italian. In fact, the association consists of a large group of youth (under 25) who wish to augment the juvenile presence and expression in the city of Sanremo. The mission of the festival is to promote social growth and bring societies beyond the "nebulous limits of the status-quo". The main values of the festival are: communication, meeting, exchange.... of ideas, people, experiences, objects. This is because, especially in times of lockdowns and the pandemic, or the growing aggressive behaviours within social media, relationships amongst people are becoming increasingly more distant and hostile. The festival was made as accessible as possible, with no age limit and open to the deaf due to the presence of translators.
The festival's 1st edition was composed of 13 different workshops, whose topics ranged from sign language, to the migration phenomenon, music, and advocators of flora. Issey and I, representing Libera, were responsible in carrying out a workshop entitled "Understanding the mafia" (very original!). At the beginning, organizing the workshop did not look like a pleasant activity. Everyone was on summer vacation and had different times to work, hence it was difficult to make even the slightest progress! Additionally, we were unaware of many aspects of our workshop, such as, the location (e.g. inside/outside, big/small space), the material accessible to us (e.g. a table/chair/screen projectors, etc), the number of potential listeners, their age group, etc. With so many question marks it was hard to find the motivation to work! The task was overwhelming .... the festival would last 3 whole days, from the 26-29th August, and the schedule created for us stated we would have to present an hour-long workshop 4 times a day !! As it was the first edition of this grand festival, we also found the organization of it to be quite chaotic .... but then, to our surprise as well, everything turned out perfectly !
We tried to make our workshops as interactive as possible. Thus, we began with a "photo montage" game, where each person would have to choose the image of one animal, from the choice of five, which for them best represented the mafia. The animals were: a lion, a shark, a rat, an owl and a snake. Which animal would you have picked, and why? Once identified, each person had to explain the motivations for their choice. As workshop organizers, we would quickly create a little brainstorm with the audience of the adjectives pick by them that showed the link between mafia and the animals. The result would be that all the adjectives could be regrouped into three main categories:
- The culture of silence;
- Intimidation;
- Subjugation.
Surprisingly, this is exactly how Article 416 Bis of the Penal Code describes the mafia phenomenon. Hence, society's understandings of the mafia have been translated into a proper legislation in 1982. What's more surprising and worrying is that Italy is the only country whose legislation explicitly identifies mafia. Although a UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime was held in Palermo, Sicily in 2000, where most countries ratified, no country has followed Italy's legislative example in their fight against the mafia. Although it is argued that mafia is most prominent in Italy than other countries, Italy is also doing the most to fight it. And the notion that mafia is only present in Italy is simply not true.
After using the interactive game to break ice, Francesca presented, for half an hour, her poster on "pizzo", meaning extorsion in Italian.
Her presentation can (briefly!) be divided into 6 steps -
Step 1:
- Presented fun facts --> e.g. Did you know that, according to some sources, mafia earns 10 billion euros yearly through extorsion? Did you know that, in Sicily there is a regional average of 70% of people who give in to extorsion?
Step 2:
- Since the aim of the workshop was to discuss potential solutions to the problem, she presented the pressing activities carried out by associations such as "Addiopizzo", meaning "goodbye extorsion" in Italian.
- Born in 2004 by a group of young activists around the slogan "a population that pays extorsion is a population without dignity". In the form of a sticker, they placed it around the city of Palermo ... a banal gesture that managed to finally break the taboo of extorsion!!
- A political organization: it pushes society to assume a decisive commitment for change through a collective cultural revolution against mafia, for social justice.
- Benefits for entrepreneurs: greater awareness towards the topics of legality and citizenship. By placing the symbolic sticker on the window shop, it was proven that mafia/extorsionists would take a step back.
- Benefits for consumers: through entrepreneurs' use of the sticker in their business, consumers can have the certainty to buy, and thus support, those who do not fall into the prey of extorsionists --> supports idea of "ethical economy".
- Addipizzo has helped over 260 victims of extorsions, helping them economically, legally, psychologically and socially. Addiopizzo has been present in many courts to denounce and to demand for a recompensation of damages caused by extorsion.
- It expanded to create Addiopizzo Store (offering extorsion-free products) and Addiopizzo Travel (extorsion-free turism guaranteed by them).
Step 3:
Then, Francesca provided 2 vivid examples of victims of extortion.
Example 1 - Pilliu Sisters
- They owned a building in the city center of Palermo. One day, a mafia constructor, Pietro Lo Sicco, wants them to sell the building to him so he can have the space to create an entirely new palace.
- While most of Pilliu's neighbours accepted, the stubborn sisters did not give in to bribes and intimidations. Annoyed, Lo Sicco frauded them by declaring that the parcels of their property were already his.
- The Pilliu sisters have fought for 30 years and won in all courts. Among other things, the sentences established that the Pilliu were entitled to a compensation of 700 thousand euros.
- Unfortunately, for various complex reasons (e.g. the fact that Lo Sicco was sentences to ten years in prison and lost all his patrimony), the sisters have not received any euro.
- In July 1992, the Pilliu sisters were contacted by the famous magistrate Paolo Borsellino about their case, a few days before he was killed. This proves just how important their case was!
- A book entitled "I can. Two women alone against the mafia" written by Pif and Marco Lillo was published. The revenues from the sales will be given entirely to the Pilliu sisters with the purpose of:
- Helping them pay the 3% of taxes on the damange compensation they never received.
- Obtaining state recognition for being victims of mafia.
- Helping them reconstruct their building.
Example 2 - Libero Grassi
- An entrepreneur killed by the mafia on the 27th of August 1991 in Palermo for not having paid his extortionist.
- He became a symbol for the fight against extortion. For his time, he was a very brave man... he showed his face in various TV programmes to talk about his experience and wrote a letter, "dear extortionist", that was published on the "Cronaca di Palermo" newspaper.
Step 4:
After showing vivid examples of victims of extortion, Francesca wanted to also show a clear example of an extortionist. She picked a video published on youtube by Giuseppe Piraino, a brave entrepreneur who faced his extortionist and filmed their encounter.
Step 5:
Then, Francesca showed a really interesting poster made by Addiopizzo. It shows the wiretappings by the police of mafia members talking to each other. In the four examples noted on the poster, their discussions clearly prove that the constant and pressuring activities of associations like Addiopizzo do indeed lead to concrete change! This is because they tell each other to not go to entrepreneurs that adhere to the anti-mafia cause as that would cause too much trouble.
The wiretapping poster (in Italian):
Step 6:
Lastly, Francesca took time to note how the mafia is taking advantage of the Covid-19 emergency, recounting quotes of speeches from experts sharing insightful statistics.
Throughout the workshops, Francesca del Bianchi, a volunteer at DeMains Libres, supported us throughout the entire festival and was of pivotal help. DeMains Libres is the anti-mafia association of France belonging to Libera's international network.
