Baggio anti-fa zone

Since I rarely step outside our "Cascina Bellaria" bubble, some things keep surprising me.

I find myself in Baggio, a district of Milan where, as I imagine in many other districts of many other cities, there are real problems, ranging from decay to a creeping night-time violence to coexistence between different cultures and ethnic groups, and plenty of others that are not the subject of this post. How to tackle and try to solve these problems certainly also depends on one's ideological leanings, which are not the subject of this post either, bearing in mind that even the best-intentioned person has no magic wand.

But if you walk through the streets of the district, you realise how little awareness there is of the problems surrounding you, and how much propaganda is at work to distract people from the real problems and make them fight each other for or against contrived shadows.

We have, in fact, the graffiti against fascism or in favour of antifascism, done by lost young lads who have no idea what fascism was, and above all believe it is the root of their problems (I would point out that fascism in Italy, backed rather than imposed by the majority of the population at the time, has not existed for more than seventy years).

Then we have the pro-Palestine graffiti, the work of zombies who think they are solving the problems of a people they know nothing about by defacing the streets of their own city and staging violent marches against the very people they should be talking to in order to solve the real problems around them. Obviously the pro-Israel side is a reflection of the same imbecility.

Perhaps it would be worth stopping, putting down roots in our own present, understanding the real problems, making friends with our neighbours and with those who share the same problems, and maybe finding solutions together. Perhaps even realising that we are all on the same side?

m.m.