Never more than in these last times Calabria and Sicily have been object of
attention by the media, and not only because of the criminal organizations that
keep on raging, thanks also to the connivances with local and national
institutions: the national and international media are attracted by an awful
series of “environmental” disasters provoked by senseless choices imposed to
geologically and economically fragile territories.
That’s how in Giampilieri and Scaletta Zanclea strong precipitations caused
devastations and death that could have been avoided just if the governments had
listened to the people that for years have been raising the alarm about
hydrogeologic risks.
In Calabria it’s evident what we always said: in the calabrian seas and
mountains the ‘ndrangheta buried toxic and nuclear wastes to make money out of
“uncomfortable” waste.
In Amantea on October 24th people could see how the Calabrians got the
consciusness of living on a poisoned territory. And the awkward attempt of Mrs.
Prestigiacomo (of the Environment) to deny the presence of ships with toxic
waste along the Calabrian coasts can’t convince us: too many anomalous tumors,
too many inacceptable deaths for cancer.
All this fits in a political panorama in which the security measures of the
territory are not in the institutional agenda, where the Salerno-Reggio
Calabria highway is for decades a building site, the connections on rail and by
sea are more and more uncomfortable.
The common goods and the collective interest are object, for the
institutions, of illegitimate and transversal business. Like water, the traffic
circulation, the quality of life.
In name of the crisis, on one side they privatize and cut, increasing the
discomforts for the citizens and swelling the ranks of the precarious and
unemployed, on the other side they invested in works that have very few to do
with the public interest.
The National Government keeps on proposing the Bridge on the Strait as a
priority, announcing the laying of the first stone of a work which neither has
a final plan, nor has an accurate evaluation of the elevated seismic risk of an
area with several faults in all directions.
To such intention we look with a lot of interest at the initiative of the
Calabrian Regional Council, that always declared itself against this work, that
made an appeal at the Constitutional Court, and approved the preliminary
document of the regional QTR (Regional Territorial Coordination Plan), that in
its aspects of urbanistic and landscape planning, doesn’t include the bridge.
In order to make these contraddictions more evident, we think it’s opportune
for the Calabrian Regional Council to withdraw its participation in the
“Stretto of Messina SpA”. It’ s clear to everybody that this Company is just a
one-armed bandit, that redistribute public resources in form of consultations,
sponsorships and parasitic expenses to feed well lubricated nepotistic
mechanisms.

The calabrian and sicilian movement against the building of the bridge on the
strait, which merged during these years in the NO Ponte Network, stated several
times, during the years of opposition and denounciation against this business,
that the bridge is not necessary for the Calabrian and Sicilian citizens.
It’s essential for these territories and for the people living in it not to
destinate the funds of the Central Government and of the Calabrian and Sicilian
for the Bridge, and to use them for safety measures and to repair to the human
devastation of the environment, which is cause of the hydrogeologic upheaval,
to clean the sea and the territories where criminal organisations hid toxic and
radioactive waste.
It’s also essential to provide these areas of connections, overland with
roads and rails, and by sea, aiming to modernize and enhance the already
existent fleet, and to implement an efficient system of integrated
transport.
It’s essential, above all, to ensure the right to life for the peoples, the
right and the need to think about and to plan their own future, both at an
individual and a collective level. And this future has to be supported by
projects that are with the real potentials of the communities, and that promote
mainly works aiming to the care, the recovery and the development of the
resources of the common goods of the territory.
This document comes out of the necessity to inform the political and
associative groups of Calabria and Sicily about the work and and the activities
developed by the movement on both shores, and about the political reflections
produced by them, to get to an exchange among the movements in struggle and
with the people of other italian and european territories. They are all united
by the same mobilization and resistance against policies decided from above
that are devastating the territories, where only the economic and financial
lobbies and the strong transversal powers are protected.
The No Ponte Network is preparing for December 19 a national rally in Villa
San Giovanni, which already got the interest and support by the resistance
movements in other territories. The organisation of this event is a path with
several steps in order to sensibilize and envolve the peoples who are directly
concerned, with several moments of meeting and information at any level.
In the future we dream of there’s no Bridge! We have to stop the building
sites and fight to face the real emergencies of our territories!
We call all the social forces, movements, communities in resistance,
commitees and grassroots groups, national networks, associations, workers,
unemployed, precarious workees, students, everybody, to strenghten this
struggle of dignity and build up together this mobilization.

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