The public assembly called by a coordination of political and environmentalist forces was held on Friday 24 May in Ancona: Altra Idea di Città, Sinistra Italiana Marche, Movimento 5 Stelle Ancona, Porto-Città Ancona Committee, Green Europe – Verdi Ancona, PCI di Ancona – Tina Modotti, Fridays For Future, Ultima Generazione, Extinction Rebellion section.
The aim of the assembly is to start and perpetuate a path and a common reflection on the fate of the port of Ancona, a crucial and economic-productive area of the region, as well as the cultural root of the citizens of Ancona. A joint action is therefore urgent in order to safeguard and defend the port area, the environment, health and work, key points that converge around the issue. The no to the quayside of the Clementino pier is the ram’s head with which an attempt is made to undermine a local and national policy that makes citizens hostage to economic interests that have nothing to do with the defense of citizens’ health – there are 110 deaths premature ones that are registered annually in the Doric municipality due to unhealthy air – with the protection of work and the defense of the monumental and landscape heritage of the ancient port and the historic center of the city.
Current policies, aimed at mass tourism linked to large ships and the cruise circuit, as well as the facilitation of shipbuilding complexes with a logic of labor exploitation, are moving further and further away from a perspective which is instead necessary for the construction of a city that aims to put the well-being of citizens, people and the environment at the centre. A priori agreements made at a table where the environmental impact assessment by the Ministry of the Environment is still missing and which are also based on a Strategic Planning Document of the Port System (DPSS) which not only makes the ancient port subservient to logical economic ones detached from the usability of the city, but seizes a historic center. In fact, the port master plan – in the hands of the port authority, in consultation with the municipalities involved and approved by the Superior Council of Public Works – will crystallize the strategic choices of the ports, delimiting their areas and those behind the port (and as regards Ancona this will affect not only the streets adjacent to the port, but also the Mole Vanvitelliana area).
Faced with a timid, if not ambiguous, attitude of the Doric municipal council, councilor Rubini of Altra Idea di Città presented a question to the mayor regarding the Dpss, whose decision on the merits cannot be relegated only to the port authority . The management of the master plan is in fact of municipal interest and therefore requires an intervention aimed at the interest of the community in order, also, not to abdicate the primary task of politics: the common good.
During the assembly, representatives of the organizing associations spoke in front of around a hundred people, joined by representatives of the Gulliver university students and the transfeminist collectives of Ancona, so as not to forget that all political struggles are necessarily intersectional. The assemblies will continue: the next online action in anticipation of the G7 Health in Ancona will be held on Sunday 26 May at the Cittadella park.
