Busy on Friday?

There’s a long post to be written about Fondi and the Mafia, so long that I haven’t time to do it today. But I’ll find the time, I hope, before Friday when the town will be host to a national demonstration against organised crime. As you can see from the poster on the left, some of Italy’s bigger names have been invited: not just opposition leaders but people who have lost members of their family, their livelihoods, their careers and, on a daily basis, their personal safety because they, or their families, have had the courage to stand up against one of the two most powerful non-elected institutions in the country. (The other one is the Vatican.) Oddly enough, there isn’t a single representative of the government among the speakers. Perhaps, in their populist way, they’ll be scattered among the demonstrators taking photographs for later use (I think this is a joke). I’ll be offering other possible reasons for their absence when I get round to telling you a little more about why Fondi, to its misfortune, should be the ideal place for a demonstration of this kind…

And they couldn’t have chosen a more aptly named square to hold it in. The Mafia may be the only thing that genuinely does unite Italy.

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