Cosenza

The Roma and the differentiated collection of feelings
conversation with Claudio Dionesalvi
by Angelo Pagliaro

"Roma are the people to separate their feelings. Select love and hate that we produce from morning to evening.
If you wear them in the cabin, as if they were trophies. Push them under the pillow before you sleep, indulge in a damp and unpredictable. So defending their dreams, brandishing our feelings good and bad, to distract evil spirits swirling through the human mind sleeper."

Cosenza, Vaglio Lise rom-camp (photo Valerio Panettieri).

Dear Claudio, this is one of the most significant passages of one of your recent article, which appeared in the fanzine that you direct "Tam Tam and Smoke Signals," (Special January 2011) the day after the long Christmas holiday period in which to put bare the hypocrisy of society and highlighting the mental barriers ...

Yes, I have daily contact with the Roma camp, it helps to see the city from a different angle. Every morning when I put myself in the car and passed through the crossroads, meeting many friends and meeting Roma in the slums on the river Crati. They tell me about their day. And I noticed that almost all of my fellow citizens against the Roma has developed a dual approach. There is a bit 'of hate and a little' pity. In short, the feelings and prejudices that the West always has for the gypsies: superstition, fear, contempt, or at best, pity.

After decades of civic associations and a number of proposals advanced by you, what did the city of Cosenza for the field of nomadic Vaglio Lise?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unprecedented social workers in the field of Vaglio Lise. Only a few convention and a bit 'blah blah blah of the papers. The mayor Perugini confirmed in this affair his general approach to the city. In order to keep riding for five years, it was locked in the rooms of the parties. So it has been ensured political stability in the bargain. Through pleasure, slapping and clientele, has put a muzzle on those four in double-breasted sharks that infest the town hall. But it was removed by associations, neighborhoods, from public life real. Imagine if you have time and desire to devote himself to the Roma issue!

When you gave birth to the "school of the Wind" would be a project that can help shape a future of hope for the Roma children?

For two years, we in the co-essence and other organizations working in support of Roma children, go to the Cosenza favela for one reason only: to build autonomy. Clearly, this is a path of solidarity. But is not the usual, hypocritical, compassionate act to earn heaven. I think the other Calabria will be built from concrete gestures, creating pieces of alternative society, practicing in network shares to the government of fear of rebellion. Blocking bulldozers, a year ago, during the attempted eviction of the slum, is on the same floor of the common school that we practice. They are two different and complementary ways to scream: mo 'basta!

From February to October 2010 has been a constant struggle to avoid evictions, removals, deportations of Roma community in Cosenza. What is the current situation?

It is dramatic. Attendance in the field of Lise Screener increase every day. Internal conflicts between the Roma are likely to escalate. The children have lice. A few days ago I saw one of them who dribbled with the carcass of a big rat. And there is serious risk that sooner or later some people to let themselves be carried away by the way Popilia xenophobia and take action against slums. Would be scenes you've seen in Rome or in Naples...

Cosenza - May 1, 2010 - Presidio night (photo by Mary Fortino).

Two emergencies: waste and the Roma

Integration, assimilation, approval, are all terms with different meanings, that administrators abused when they talk about Rom ... there, in your opinion, a strategy of language?

Sure! In a perspective of communicative action, language has constitutional value. For terms like integration and assimilation, I prefer to "compatibility". In the last year, this informal network of associations was able to increase the number of Roma children who attend Italian schools, but also carried off the field in which they were confined after the evacuation of 2007. All this, without asking a penny! There are also ethnic trade unionists, who are familiar with the streets of public support and patronage. Those always seem to be giving money by his politics. Money, then disappear. That is, unable to gain the despair: the desperation economy.

What future can be expected for the Roma of Cosenza if you were to continue in public schizophrenic policy, alternating welfarism and repression?

The new prefect Cannizzaro was sent to Cosenza to solve two emergencies: the waste and the Roma. The approach by the state, is not accidental. So expect an imminent solution by force, which of course we will oppose by any means necessary. This option police had already been put into practice, if four poor children were burned to death in Rome. It's amazing how only the most atrocious events are able to shake - however small - the conscience. The sacrifice of these children cries out for vengeance. Paradoxically serve to alleviate the pressure on world rom. But this will not last long. A few days before the fire, police, prosecutors and the prefecture of Cosenza had already started to rip the arms of their mothers, children addicted to begging, entrusting them to the nuns. It is a barbarism, especially when such operations are carried out without having first tried to implement concrete policies that welcome them. I'd like to see how they would feel the parents of young unemployed people in Calabria, where in a few months, will resume when the farce of elections, the police seized their children while they are in line in front of the secretariats of the political, hat in hand, desperate request a place to work. Is not that ... well begging?!?