The fight against the bridge over the Strait of Messina does not stop; this time it was Villa San Giovanni that hosted, on May 18th, a new demonstration aimed at reiterating the opposition of the territories and people to this project.
Many other organizations, local and non-local, institutional and non-institutional, have joined the associations and promoting committees, which have been established for years on both sides precisely to oppose the implementation of this work: among others, the WWF, Legambiente, the Scouts, Libera, the USB, the CGIL, but also, in addition to that of Villa San Giovanni, the municipalities of Polistena, Gioia Tauro and Catanzaro, the M5S, Rifondazione Comunista, the PD, AVS.
The town was invaded by several thousand people who, with slogans, placards, music and interventions, wanted to express dissent for this pharaonic work, which, despite (or perhaps precisely because of) the mountain of money used in it, has no repercussions positive on the territory, to which it actually causes considerable damage in terms of destruction of resources.
The procession was sunny, colourful, musical, danced and participated until the end by people of all ages; accompanied in its unfolding by the many banners hanging from the windows, on the balconies, on the gates of the houses and which acted as a bank and an embrace for the river of people that animated the streets of the city, uniting the feelings of the inhabitants of Villa San Giovanni and Cannitello to that of the demonstrators.
“No to the Bridge”, “Let’s keep it Strait”, “The Strait of Messina cannot be touched: Sicily, Calabria united in the fight”, “No to the Bridge of Lies”, these are some of the slogans of the procession.
The march, which started from Piazza Valsesia in Villa San Giovanni, ended in the square of the Church of Cannitello, with speeches from the stage set up there.
The various voices that have taken turns have made the reasons for the protest clear, which certainly concern the technical aspects of the work, which are far from resolved, but which also concern, and indeed primarily, the idea of development from which it is born, and which proceeds with imposed macro works, trampling on existing resources and mortifying the self-determination of the territories.
The collective imagination also focuses on the image of a bridge that magically unites the two banks as if it left them intact: far from it!
The interventions have also shifted attention to everything that lies behind you on both coasts: on the frenzy of junctions, on the enormity of the excavation works, on the distortion of the two coasts for tens of kilometers upstream and downstream of the actual bridge.
The interests of the large multinationals behind this work were recalled, certainly opposed to an idea of internal development of the areas that should undergo it, but symbiotic with the appetites of local organized crime, especially for the relaxation of controls and the specialty of the procedures adopted for the construction of the bridge.
Furthermore, if the serious technical findings suggest that it will be difficult to actually build it, equally serious concern has emerged over the “mere” start of those “preparatory” works (expropriations, excavations, staking out construction sites, demolition of homes, junctions etc. on both banks), which would have the effect of distorting and devastating the territory and leaving overbuilding as vast as it is useless; as already partly happened in 2011 in the Cannitello area, where we appreciate the looming of a mammoth road variant, part of an accessory junction to the bridge, unfinished and unusable, which has only produced the destruction of a large portion of the hillside.
The bridge, it was concluded, is therefore not only a useless but also a harmful work, the result of speculative and predatory logic which still reduces the territory of Calabria and Sicily to an object of colonial occupation; a work against which the fight must and intends to continue with upcoming initiatives on the Sicilian shore, already announced by the committees at the end of the event.
