At a certain point, about a year ago, Don Giacomo’s community becomes the victim of a sneaky, cowardly attack. One evening, in front of another Progetto Sud location, a rehabilitation centre, two disabled individuals who work in the community have the brakes on their cars tampered with: two vehicles equipped for transporting people with disabilities. They are parked at the top of a very steep road, with two hairpin turns, which comes out on a very busy street. Fortunately, the driver of one of the cars immediately notices that the brakes aren’t responding and manages to pull the handbrake. The other car is mercifully stopped by a tree.

The potency of this story is that it demonstrates a truth. Living and working in these premises means sending the town of Lamezia Terme a message: if you can reclaim the house of a boss, maybe you can reclaim society. Don Giacomo’s community has been the guinea pig: it has pioneered the way to utilizing other seized assets, and has left its mark. And Don Giacomo, a man from the North, has fully understood the resourcefulness of the South. It is not enough to come and simply do things right. You must come and change them. Change them with the talents you have, without looking elsewhere for them. Only in this way, if you are someone who is forced to live differently, will you create a different Italy.

I learned of this story a long time ago when Don Giacomo invited me to the community. I’ve seen how they live there, I’ve seen that what a person lacks becomes an added value there. There is no resignation, rather a desire to act. By bringing these people together, Don Giacomo has succeeded in doing what all the others had failed to do.

A disabled woman, Emma, who works in the community, told me:

Over and above being disabled, I am a person with rights and duties. So in addition to rights, I felt I also had some responsibilities to the region, because it is an area that has a huge scourge, the ’Ndrangheta, and I’m not comfortable there, I feel constrained in such oppressive surroundings. I can accept my disability because it is a natural fact, but I can’t accept suffering inflicted by man.

4.

Waste and Contaminants: The Toxic Mountain

You have to imagine Mont Blanc, 15,780 feet, the highest mountain in Europe. Or K2, 28,251 feet, the second highest mountain in the world. Or better yet, the highest one of all, Mount Everest, 29,028 feet. Well, even Everest is nothing compared to what could be the highest mountain on earth: the sum total of all the illegal waste managed by criminal organizations. This waste would form a mountain 51,181 feet high, with a base of 7.4 acres.