“Now it’s your turn”. From the stage set up outside the Vittorio Emanuele III institute in via Duca della Verdura in Palermo, Vito Lo Monaco, president of the Pio La Torre study centre, launches the fight against the «new mafia, which shoots less but succeeds to better infiltrate civil society – underlines Lo Monaco – the Pio La Torre law made it possible to defeat the old mafia and will continue to be used to fight and defeat it again”. Words that flow among a hundred of those present, all with their eyes upwards waiting for the new mural signed by the artist Igor Scalisi Palminteri, who portrayed Pio La Torre on one of the external walls of the school, to be unveiled.
The event, which closed the national assembly against mafia and corruption of the national CGIL, was born from a process of sharing that the A Pio La Torre committee of the Iti Vittorio Emanuele III, chaired by his son Franco, carried out with the teachers and students. The 1,600 students of the school, which the politician and trade unionist also attended at a young age, chose the sketch.
A discovery learned last year, when, speaking with his nephew, teachers and children discovered that those corridors were also frequented by La Torre. Many personalities were present, including the president of the regional anti-mafia commission Antonello Cracolici, Rosi Bindi, the former president of the Senate Pietro Grasso, the national secretary of the CGIL Maurizio Landini. Who recalled that fighting the mafia «for us means affirming the rights and fulfillment of people starting from young people: it means changing that social and economic model that has established itself in recent years which has also produced a business model based on subcontracting, the exploitation and reduction of rights”.
There is still a high and significant segment of young people for whom the mafia phenomenon cannot be extinguished and indeed remains stronger than the State, according to a questionnaire. This year, 1578 students aged 14 to 21 were involved in the anti-mafia educational project. Despite the successes of the counteractions, only 20.6% of the young people interviewed responded positively to the question whether the mafia can be defeated. 49.8%, however, believe not. Basically one in two. Around one in three says they don’t have a precise opinion on the matter. By adding together the students who selected “no” among the response methods and those, on the contrary, who were doubtful, we reach a figure of almost 80%. Basically, only one student in five thinks that the mafia can be definitively put out of action.
In the video the words of Vito Lo Monaco, president of the Pio La Torre study center, Franco La Torre, Rosi Bindi and Maurizio Landini
