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| Hometown Calitri, Italy (viewed from a friend's window) |
Understanding cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of
the world for a lifetime. When you
travel, it’s said that you gradually shed your patina of prejudice, bigotry,
and narrow-mindedness. About now,
however, given the situation, reading and planning about travel is a lot safer
than experiencing it. One day recently,
while I was trying to catch up on what was happening in Calitri, hoping things were
improving, this is what came to me as translated by Google:
“One of our fellow citizens, Roberta Z….., has returned
from Spain, where she works, for urgent family reasons. She tested positive for buffer [COVID] at the
airport. She's under mandatory
quarantine with her father who went to get her.
The result came back to Calitri.
Roberta had no contact with her mother and sisters. However, for precautionary reasons, the rest
of the family is in trust [self] isolation, at another house. They're all fine. They authorized me to
spread the news to calm everyone down.
Wishing good health to Roberta and the whole family. We are close to you. We continue to respect social distancing,
wearing masks everywhere, and washing our hands. Together we will get through it.”
These
were the recent words of Michele Di Maio, the sindaco or mayor of Calitri. Using the social media of Facebook, he got
the word out ahead of misinformation and rumor which would likely have ensued. It’s
a topic that can go viral fast, if not while face-to-face at the passeggiata, then during the
evening stroll through everyone’s pocket media when
social distancing doesn’t feel comfortable enough. There is a saying that a lie can
travel halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. Short of a lie, rumors also move fast. We reside in a world of relative truth, subjective
reality, speculation, and personal Facebook “narratives.” Like it or not we seem to treat what is really
happening as malleable.
Michele was recently re-elected for a second 5-year term. Fortunately, Michele is a man for the times, a leader you’d want to follow. More to the point, he’s the exact person you’d want at the helm,
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| Michele Di Maio - Mayor of Calitri |
His
affirmations, “We
are close to you” and “Together we will get through it,” reseeded the reality in
his fellow townspeople who over the centuries have seen every sort of hardship,
NOT to despair for this scourge will end. In our current pretend world, somewhere between here
and there, now and then, normal and new normal, his emphasis on “Together” reaffirmed that neither were
they alone. Calitri
is a rather small community, around 4,500 people all told, and close knit like
the farm communities of our mid-west.
Family members rely on each other and look to one other for support. Then, the intermarriage among families knits
everyone together even more. We all
recall stories here in the States of how during hard times families pitch-in to
harvest crops when someone is ill or together raise a barn that recently burned
down. Here in the States, it makes the
news; in Calitri and I suspect throughout Italy, it’s the norm. It is this milieu, or might I call it the
filling, that makes Italy so different.
It is hard to put it into words, though god knows I’ve tried, but family
is like that secret ingredient in the sauce, the milieu of a Twinkie. It’s part of what makes Italian people unique
in their caring and empathy. His
informative message and words of encouragement to his constituents struck me like the stanzas and verses of a poem where words
compress significant meaning. His is an
idealism resplendent in values, decency, and ethics.
It was out of necessity and a
call for civic duty on the order of the theme of the movie, Mr Smith Goes to
Washington, directed by Sicilian born Frank Capra (staring folksy Jimmy
Stewart if you recall), that Michele became mayor in the first place. By the way, in passing, that movie was attacked by the Washington press elites of the day and
politicians in the U.S. Congress
as anti-American
and pro-Communist for its
portrayal of corruption in the American government. Released in
1939, it was banned in Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, General Franco's Spain and surprisingly, since it was claimed to be “pro-communist”,
even in Stalin's USSR. Nevertheless,
it was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning
for Best Original
Story and is today considered among the greatest 100 films of all time
by the American Film Institute.
I pretty
much understand how elections
operate in the States, and if there is anything I’ve learned over the years,
it’s that they go on far too long and involve too much money. I have a lesser feel for how elections operate
in Italian small towns where they’re composed of mayoral candidates and lists
of potential councilors (consiglio comunale). Under this system, voters express a direct
choice for the mayor or indirectly by voting for the party of a mayoral candidate's
councilors. In small towns, the
candidate for mayor who obtains the most votes is elected mayor. While I can’t imagine it happens often, in the
case of a tie, age becomes the deciding factor with the most senior of the two elected. Apparently, age with its hoped for maturity
and experience, trumps youth. When you
vote directly for the mayor, you are also endorsing his/her list of councilors. To vote for the mayor you make an “X” through
the candidate’s name. The use of an “X”
through a name to indicate selection seems odd to me. But then, I think it odd to strike a line
through the stem of the number “7” to not confuse it with a “1”, when the ‘top’
of a “7” is supposed to do that. It goes
along with their penchant to draw a slash mark through a zero to avoid
confusing it with an “O”, or much like as with a seven, adding a line to the
stem of a “Z” so as not to confuse it with a “2.” It must certainly help with passwords. This adheres with other practices, many I’m
sure, vestiges of ancient origin.
Notice, for example, how Italians (all Europeans?) signal the number
three using their fingers verses how Americans do. I’ll leave that case study to you. We each, clearly, have our ways, X’ing being
one of them, where at least to me, X’ing through someone’s name indicates rejection
or elimination, not approval.
The
election of municipal councilors is
carried out with a majority system at the same time as the election of the
mayor. Each candidate for the office of
mayor is linked to a list of municipal councilor candidates that I think of as
a winning mayor’s proposed cabinet members.
A voter can accept the proposed list in its entirety if he votes only
for the mayor and does not select any other names as councilors. A voter may also choose two candidate
councilors from the list that supports the mayor or choose from the lists of
the mayor's coalition (when a coalition of multiple parties is presented on the
ballot under the mayor’s name). A
mayor’s candidate list of potential councilors can also be longer than the
number of available positions. Finally,
there is a further voting possibility. A
voter may vote for two councilors, writing in the names belonging to the coalition
lists of a competing mayoral candidate. This
is called a “disjointed vote.” This is
where my confusion is compounded and begins to thicken. Winning write-ins from lists outside the
winning mayor’s list and his coalition team lists join that mayor’s cabinet as
members of the opposition. Also, when
you go “disjointed” or in any way cast your vote for councilors by way of write-ins,
the names had better be written correctly as presented on a list, or your vote
is rejected. While it
may be true that even with an error in spelling it could be perfectly clear who
you meant as your write-in(s), that vote is rejected, as was the case with some
of the votes in the ‘hanging chad’ Florida voting debacle the USA experienced a
few years back. You have to get it right and there are no lists
of names available while voting to help you with spelling. They are located outside the polling stations
where posters with the electoral lists for each candidate for mayor are presented. Disjointed voting is not a complete “Chinese
menu,” however, because the two write-ins must be from the same list, not one
from List A and another from List D. Councilors
who obtain the most ‘list votes’ from whichever valid list they may come from,
win seats in the mayor's cabinet. There
are also cases where a losing mayor from another party can come over too. Got it?
I wonder how it is sorted out with all the possible permutations. This jumble is confusing to me, but it gets
worse with additional rules for municipalities with populations greater than
15,000. Bureaucratic machinations are
legion in Italy. The adage about laws
and sausage making comes to mind and goes like this: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” Needless to say, however the “sausage” is
made by politicians, to include the rules governing how we vote, elections have
consequences.
I’m not
familiar with
Michele’s involvement in politics prior to his election as Calitri’s
mayor. I can’t get to Calitri to inquire. I’m also uncertain if it was a clean sweep
without any ties, need for age discrimination or the influx of members of the
opposition. That it came about is
clear. It was triggered by the
implosion of the majority center-left administration led by former Mayor
Rubinetti. After the simultaneous
resignations of eight city council members in 2015, the government dissolved
and was replaced with a temporary caretaker commissioner. A “clean up on aisle five” was needed and
quickly. Out of concern for this necessity, a grassroots, non-profit, political-cultural association
that came to be called “Movimento Calitri Pulita” (Calitri Clean Movement)
emerged. This
concerned group of citizens spanned the socio-economic matrix of Calitri and
brought together those with political experience, those seeking it, yet all
concerned with improving the quality of life in Calitri by participating in
local government.
Early on, Mr. Di
Maio went on to explain:
“Nobody
is against the parties but, in this phase of democratic emergency, it is
believed that their drive to organize consensus has run
out. The social, economic and political
disintegration leads us to appeal to all citizens to participate in the process of change, of renewal of the ruling
political class. The construction site
is open, now we need to transform, with the help of everyone, ideas into
concrete projects, with budgets in hand.”
His
words, uttered during the early days of the movement, make it clear that this undertaking
was not an initiative on the part of a national political party. While parties like Partito Democratico (PD), Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement), Lega Nord (North League),
and others had had their
chance, paralysis in Calitri’s town hall necessitated that local citizens come
forward and take action. Michele
had the vision to see what needed to be done and the wherewithal in calling for constituents to get onboard
to help make it happen. The philosopher Confucius eloquently put it this way:
"He who exercises government by means of his
virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place, and all
the stars turn towards it."
Now in this, his
second five year term with the help of other like-minded citizens, he plans to see
it through. Drawing from the words of the Movimento Calitri
Pulita’s political plank, they stated that they would …
“embark on a democratic path, from below, participated,
shared, inclusive, non-violent, outside parties, having lost their capacity to
"organize consent". The
Movement will work to promote the birth and development of all forms and
experiences of direct and grassroot democracy.
It will collaborate with the political and social subjects that pursue
its same objectives, that they are endowed with democratic internal rules and a
transparent budget.”
Initially five working groups were formed: Legality and Participatory Budget; Productive
Activities; Environment and Territory; Culture, Schools,
Festivals, Associations, Sports; and finally, Health. It was from the concerted efforts of these
teams that things began to happen and Calitri gradually
changed for the better. I hadn’t noticed
much change in all our years there but gradually improvements in services and
the general environment emerged throughout town. This was especially the case with a clean-up
of the medieval borgo where we lived.
Little things … it was 2015 when for the first time, our daughter’s
family come to visit. We would all
arrive together. Maria Elena, concerned
about first impressions, prayed that after we’d parked and were walking through
the tunnel entrance to the Borgo by the town hall, things would be clean and
tidy. Litter can be a problem and not
just when there is a worker’s strike.
Perhaps it’s unintentional, without much thought, but Italians seem to
prefer to dispose of things the easy way - out the window, crumpled on the
street, tossed by the side of a road – while their property, beginning at the
marble clad hallways beyond their doors, is immaculate. Walking into town, I’d come upon all kinds of
wrappers, cigarette boxes, plastic shopping 
Actor Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove
bags, newspaper flyers, even the
occasional tire. And I’m not one, thanks
to my ‘clean genes’ which I’ve written about in the past, who can disregard its
presence. While I can identify easily
with actor Slim Pickens in the movie, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Strangelove
with that uncontrollable arm of his has nothing on me! Walking from our house toward our Borgo tunnel
exit, I’m somehow compelled to pick up what I can and deposit it in the trash
receptacles when I emerge in the piazza. It’s hard for me not to. To our hushed
surprise, however, our arrival was perfect to the point that you could just
about smell the bright new paint on the walls as we entered the Borgo. The Clean Movement, which we knew nothing
about at the time and which had just taken over, had been busy. Their cleaning, repairing, and general
improvement efforts were just beginning.
Not long afterward, thanks to follow-on initiatives coined “funding
opportunities,” Calitri would receive regional and EU funding for further improvement
projects in the Borgo and throughout town.
Those working groups apparently had some talented grant proposal writers
who made it happen.
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| The Mayor, the Borgo Tunnel and Calitri Town Hall |
One of their initiatives that I find especially interesting is the “Contribution to Support Families.” It attempts to address the drop in the number of Calitri residents by monetarily rewarding parents who have children. Manipulating demographics is not new. As an interesting aside, in October 2015, as a consequence of the previous ‘One-Child’ Chinese policy that in addition to forced sterilizations, abortions, and infanticide resulted in basically too many men, the Chinese government announced plans to abolish their One-Child policy. Punitive measures for urban couples who flouted the single child policy saw their salaries reduced by 15 per cent until the child reached age seven. In rural areas couples who exceeded the child limit but couldn't afford to pay the fines, saw government officials seize their furniture, motorcycles or other property. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that they went so far as to, can you believe, deny anesthetics to women while giving birth, “to increase their aversion to getting pregnant again.” As of 1 January 2016, the Chinese Communist Party changed its formula. It now allows all families to have two children "to improve the balanced development of population." This is a response to the country's low female-to-male sex ratio, i.e. no brides for the guys. I’ve no idea what happens now if you have more than two children, but their past practices may provide a hint. The Chinese government has clearly stepped in and decided what’s best for its citizens while Italians of their own volition have taken another approach without government interference.
In 2018 total Italian births were reported to be 440,000, the lowest since the unification of Italy in 1861. This fourth straight year of population decline has economists saying its aging and shrinking workforce contributes to Italy’s chronically stagnant economy. I recall that even before COVID made its ugly presence felt, workforce unemployment, as reported in the newspapers I’d look through in Mario’s Café, was in the 17-20% range. This lack of job opportunity, especially in southern Italy in small towns like Calitri, has resulted in stagnant incomes which drives a reluctance to have children they can’t afford. For now, immigration, both legal and illegal, has filled the gap. The Contribution to Support Families plan was essentially a “birthing reward” initiative granted to families on the birth of a child following satisfaction of the following requirements:
a) At
least one of the parents is resident, for one year prior to the birth of the
child, in the Municipality of Calitri
b) That
the unborn child is registered, within the deadline, in the registry office of
the Municipality of Calitri
c) The
ISEE (financial situation certificate) of
the family unit, valid on the date of submission of the application for
contribution, does not exceed €12,000.00
While this was underway, in an
effort to stimulate the economy and avoid additional depopulation of inland territories,
as is the case due to Calitri’s location midway on the Italian peninsula, Michele
fought hard to pursue the financing of the Eboli-Calitri railroad line. To raise awareness of the potential usefulness of the project, he pushed
for the creation of an Eboli-Calitri
Railway Committee and a 
Planned Eboli-Calitri Railway
(Eboli upper left, Calitri lower right)
feasibility
study to assess the potential of this 35 km stretch of rail that would link 12 interior
small-town industrial areas. The
initiative was timely especially with the burgeoning growth in concern for the
environment. Using this rail service verses
an automobile, it is claimed that carbon emissions would be reduced 64%. The line’s genesis originated with an
earlier, very old Bourbon project, never completed, that dates back to before
the unification of Italy. It sought to
connect the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west to the Adriatic Sea to the east. Beyond its green benefits and the possibility
for population growth through migration into the affected areas, the movement of
people and goods would open-up what are essentially lost interior territories
to and from the seaside regions of Salerno to the west and Taranto to the east. Its anticipated strong social and economic
impact to agriculture, industry, and tourism would be a shot in the arm and add
renewed vitality to the south, which for centuries has been abandoned to itself.
Beyond this attempt to address the decline
in population, which mimics similar policies in other parts of Europe, and the
rudimentary activities of running a town, additional initiatives in this new twist
in Calitri politics included:
·
Institution of a pro-culture, pro-school and
pro-tourism campaign
·
The improvement in public and private libraries
·
Support to area sports and cultural associations
·
Promotion of the integration of the disabled in Municipal
sponsored activities and the full linguistic and social integration of
foreigners
·
Stimulate the craft sector for which Calitri was
historically known beyond the successful promotion of Calitri as the "City
of Ceramics”
You know, when I began writing this tale, honestly, I didn’t
have the slightest idea where I was going with it. I was just impressed with an informative
social posting by the mayor and appreciated the out-front leadership he displayed.
In the process, I made the unfamiliar
more familiar by learning something about the Italian system for electing mayors
in small towns with populations less than 15,000. Calitri, sloping down the side of a plateau,
certainly qualifies. When I inquired which
of the many Italian political party he represented, it really got interesting to
discover that he led a local grassroots movement where the citizens had taken
control of their destiny. A slew of ‘Mr Smiths’ had gone not to Washington, but
to Calitri. In reality, their
ideology is likely a mix taken here and there from many political creeds across
the broad spectrum of Italian politics, left to right, settling in my
estimation left of center, with special emphasis on the environment. The fledgling movement Sindaco Michele Di
Maio leads made a beginning in its first term that fueled an infectious
enthusiasm of trust and confidence in the public huge enough to recently result
in re-election of the Movimento Calitri Pulita.
Like the
concept of the
citizen-soldier who serves for a period before returning to civilian life, so
the concept of a citizen-legislator emerged, essentially composing a
participatory government of amateurs. I
like it. Absent the careerist and
professional politician, it seems to have taken hold in 
Calitri's Mayor Michele Di Maio
with His Distinctive Mayoral Sash
Calitri. I’ll avoid the mental gymnastics of why he
made the magical jump from restauranteur to master superhero citizen
administrator. Whether it was all at
once or in a series of little moves, it nonetheless happened on the advent of
the political vacuum that had emerged. Nature
abhors a vacuum, and it seems, so does politics. Aware how politicians from time to time
return home to chat with their constituents in an effort to update themselves
on current concerns, it just may have been a personal metamorphosis gleaned
right there in his restaurant while maneuvering among the tables of the Tre
Rose listening to fellow citizens.
Whatever its genesis, Michele took up the burden of a cause that he
considered at that moment more important than his own private life and filled a
need. Like the citizen-legislator he is,
it is only a matter of years before he returns, full time, to the pasta and mouth-watering
sauce served at Tre Rose, confident in the knowledge that he had ‘nourished’
the lives and futures of his neighbors. In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy's inspired a
nation to civic action with the historic words that challenged every citizen to
contribute in some way to the public good, saying, “Ask not what your country
can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” For now at least, this seems to have
taken hold in Calitri. Long may it
continue.
From That Rogue Tourist,
Paolo
