On April 25, the ANPI: “Long live the Antifascist Republic – Ceasefire everywhere”

BRINDISI – The provincial ANPI of Brindisi for an extraordinary April 25th. In the capital it begins at 10.30 am with a ceremony in Piazza Santa Teresa in the presence of the civil and military authorities. Subsequently, around 11 am, we will continue in Piazza Sottile De Falco where, among other things, the participants in the anti-fascist ride of ANPI and Fiab will be welcomed. After the speech of the ANPI Brindisi and other authorities, a laurel wreath will be placed under the plaque dedicated to the Brindisi partisan, gold medal of the Resistance, Vincenzo Gigante, and to all the other fighters and fallen of the Brindisi Liberation struggle and province. Like every year, a basket of flowers will honor the financiers Tony Sottile and Alberto De Falco, innocent victims of the mafia, partisans of legality. Resistance music and readings will be dedicated to anti-fascists and anti-fascists. In the afternoon, at 3.30 pm, we move to the hamlet of Tuturano for a ceremony of the ANPI Brindisi and the fr/Azione di Tuturano association in front of the plaque dedicated to April 25th in Piazza Regina Margherita. Events are planned in all ANPI city sections of the province of Brindisi starting from Ceglie Messapica, Tuesday 23 April, and then on the 25th in Ostuni, Francavilla Fontana, Mesagne. The ANPI Brindisi provincial committee endorses the appeal of the ANPI national secretariat which we publish below.

“The date of April 25th is a symbol of Italy being free and liberated, after twenty months of Resistance and an extraordinary tribute of blood and pain. End of the German occupation. End of fascism. End of the conflict. The fascist state was overthrown, but also the old liberal state, and the construction of a new state and a new society began. On 2 June 1946 the people chose the Republic and with the Constitution of 1948 democratic Italy was born, which is based on work and repudiates war. • Today everything is in danger. There is a government that includes an extreme right that has its roots in the twenty years of fascism and its nostalgia, which for this reason intends to change the Constitution. With a single man (or a single woman) in command – the so-called “premier” – and a country divided into many regions competing with each other, with different citizens’ rights – the differentiated autonomy of the regions -. An extreme right that in various ways tends to repress any dissent, any protest. An aggressive, vindictive and demanding extreme right. • Everything is in danger because there are millions of poor people, precarious work is rampant, with a government that cuts healthcare and public schools, with the whole of Europe at risk of economic recession. There is great social loneliness, the future is seen as a threat. • Everything is in danger because there is war, and it is often talked about irresponsibly, as if it were a harsh necessity or, worse, a new and acceptable normality. While the entire world rearms as before the two world wars, a high-intensity conventional war in Europe is declared possible. We are crazy. President Mattarella is right when he underlines that our country’s task is to “build bridges of dialogue, of collaboration with other nations, respecting each people”. An April 25, 2024 liberation from war is urgently needed. Ceasefire everywhere. Let’s face it: an alarm must be raised. Democracy, freedom, equality, work, solidarity, peace are under discussion, that is, the democratic republic founded on the Constitution and born from the Resistance. This April 25th cannot be like the others. It must be the day in which anti-fascist and democratic Italy, families, women, young people, our great deluded and disappointed people, to whom a true hope for the future, made up of a good job, of sufficient remuneration for a free and dignified life, of a stable and lasting peace. Let’s build it together this April 25th, let’s build it as an extraordinary event that cannot be missed, as an insurmountable and peaceful barrier against any attack on democracy and freedoms. Let’s build it together by waving the flags of the best country, the flag of the anti-fascist Constitution, the flag of an Italy founded on work and which repudiates war, the flag of those from whose sacrifice the seeds of a new Italy arose. LET’S MAKE THIS 25TH APRIL AN UNFORGETTABLE DAY. TOGETHER”.