Ferrara, 17 June 2024 – Their ‘exploits’ come often film with your cell phone and posted on social media such as TikTok and Instagram. Alcohol and drugs transform them. “They are eight kids, all minors and Italian, they mostly come from respectable families. One of them has a father who does the teacher. They take drugs and deal to get money. They are the protagonists of the vandalism who hit one forty cars”, say two little girls, Cinzia and Maurizia (these are fictitious names), tired of the situation.
Already, Pontelagoscuro it is perpetually poised between degradation and the desire for redemption of young people who do not give up. The two girls want to report what happens every day on the outskirts of the city. They welcome us in the park in front of the nursery. “Come with us, we’ll take you to meeting place for baby pushers”, and so the tour begins.
Between the new and old houses, just walk one dirt roada parallel one to via Rovigo, to get to the railway where, under the bridge, the degradation has served. You can find everything: scrap, syringes, fire extinguishers, and a small ravine chosen as the headquarters of baby pushers. Precisely in this forgotten corner, there is one of the headquarters of a small group of minors, who they use drugs and, to obtain them, they are forced to become drug dealers themselves.
“Everything happens down here, but the problems start when they get tired of being here – Cinzia and Maurizia continue –. They start wandering around until they decide to damage cars and commit thefts.”
But there is another side of Pontelagoscuro: groups of friends who respect the rules and do their best to make the ‘good’ face of the neighborhood shine through. “Unfortunately – continue the two friends – there are no meeting places. The only way to find each other are in bars and game rooms, but here we risk meeting the other group. Even now that we are telling our odyssey, we are afraid of reprisals.”
Once to find shelter there was the parish: “The back door was always open and, for us, it was a refuge.” Then everything changed: “Don Silvano Bedin was transferred and that door is now closed – underlines Cinzia –. For us this priest was a point of reference: he often resolved conflicts that arose in the neighborhood.” Even in recent weeks the streets of Pontelagoscuro have been the scene of vandalism, with cars and vans hit by the usual unknown people.
The teacher Michele Ronchi Stefanati underlines the “state of degradation of the neighborhood” and adds: “Pontelagoscuro is a potentially magical place but its inhabitants – and in particular the young people – have been abandoned by an administration that has confined here all the problems that it wanted to hide elsewhere”.
And here is the solution: “We need a listening and welcoming unit without prejudice – Stefanati remarks –, as Don Silvano Bedin was for many years. Politics must offer concrete life alternatives that allow us not to find ourselves forced to choose petty crime.” The risk is that other kids will follow in the footsteps of baby pushers. “Young people – explains Stefanati – tell us that if you grow up seeing only drug dealing, fights and violence, you become like this by force. They are right: we need virtuous examples, not mockery.”
