New life

«The awakening of the world to a new life, necessary and possible, can only mature from the awakening of individual consciences committed to organizing themselves into structures – both robust and non-violent – ​​capable of promoting personal and collective creativity».
Thus Danilo Dolci (1924-1997) summarizes in a quick passage the importance of awareness and conscience in the processes of understanding and changing social realities based on injustice and violence. Dolci was one of the most significant Italian thinkers of nonviolence.

A multifaceted personality, from Trieste who decided to move to Sicily in 1952, outside of many patterns and therefore difficult to label, committed through different forms of expression to give voice to the poor, to the least, he tried to promote the dignity of people, their effective participation – as the Constitution itself reminds us in art. 3 – «to the political, economic and social organization of the country». Bread, work, democracy, legality and fight against the mafia are key words to understand his thoughts and actions.
Always from below. Always with the belief that ideas must get their hands dirty, mix with life, transform into activities capable of changing the present. Like in January 1956, when he organized a reverse strike in Partinico, Sicily. With hundreds of unemployed people he began working to recover an old abandoned road. Usually by strike we mean abstention from work, but how does an unemployed person go on strike? Here then was the idea of ​​going on strike while working.
Dolci and his collaborators were arrested for resisting a public official, disobeying the law and invading land. The ensuing trial allowed Dolci to denounce the gravity of Sicilian backwardness, also supported by the support of many intellectuals such as Carlo Levi, Elio Vittorini, Giorgio La Pira, Norberto Bobbio. His testimony and commitment greatly affected all those who wished to work for peace, disarmament and the nonviolent transformation of society.

Even a young Ernesto Olivero wanted to involve Dolci in his initiatives. In a letter dated 28 November 1973, Danilo Dolci, responding to an invitation from Sermig, left this short but significant message: «In a group of farmers, we were reflecting on the absurd waste of war and the nature of peace.
Everyone expressed themselves. A 5-year-old child was also asked to express himself: after thinking for a long time, in silence, he concluded: "Peace is the opposite - not the lack, he wanted to say - of war".
Even for Sermig, in those years, the mobilization for disarmament had moved from helping people to build a new mentality, based on a solid knowledge of reality.

A few weeks later, on January 21, 1974, Ernesto Olivero replied that: «Since the beginning of last year [...] we have tried to examine and address the problems of hunger, exploitation, housing, because we realized that only together will we be able to achieve something. And for this reason, on January 1st in the presence of 3,000 people [...] we launched the "opinion movement" with those same groups: it was the beginning of a work to raise awareness against the production of weapons which we will develop in the coming months because we are convinced that to address problems, even big problems, it is necessary to involve people and make them understand that they can only be solved if everyone becomes aware of them and if everyone, personally, commits themselves with their lives to address them".

Ideas - in times like the current ones - to take back a thought capable of constituting a valid alternative to relationships based solely on force, violence and oppression. With his maieutic method, Dolci tried to avoid becoming, as the "Gandhi of Sicily" himself said, "homo insapiens".

Renato Bonomo
NP August / September 2024