© AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino
Volunteers clean the banks of the Tiber river, Rome, as part of the Retake Rome gathering, Sunday April 17, 2016. Tired of waiting years for the city to replace diseased trees and do other work, Romans are starting to take back their city.
Volunteers clean the banks of the Tiber river, Rome, as part of the Retake Rome gathering, Sunday April 17, 2016. Tired of waiting years for the city to replace diseased trees and do other work, Romans are starting to take back their city.
Romans are starting to take back their city, which for years was plundered and neglected by City Hall officials and cronies so conniving that some of them are on trial as alleged mobsters.
In doing the work, Romans are experimenting with what for many Italians is a novel and alien concept: a sense of civic duty.
One windy recent Sunday morning, Manuela Di Santo slathered paint over graffiti defacing a wall on Via Ludovico di Monreale, a residential block in Rome's middle-class Monteverde neighborhood. Men, perched on ladders, used mechanical sanders to erase graffiti on another palazzo. Women and children swept up litter, filling black plastic trash bags provided by the city's sanitation service, which is only too glad to have someone do the job for free.
"Either I help the city, or we're all brought to our knees," said Di Santo.
Comment: Bravo to these Romans who have recognized that the quality of their lives is in their own hands and have begun the necessary steps to reclaim their power. If these types of movements could gain traction around the globe, perhaps we might collectively begin to hope for a better future for humanity.
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