News - October 31, 2008

A monumental collaboration in support of legality

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As the result of an extraordinary, first-time agreement between Syracuse University in Florence and the Direction of the Regional Office of Academic Affairs for Tuscany, SU Florence studio arts students will work with Italian students to ideate and build a monument against illegality and, at the same time, in memory of the victims of the 1993 Mafia bombing which took the lives of five people in via dei Georgofili, Florence, Italy. The project was presented to the public during a conference, covered by national press, held in October at Syracuse University in Florence.

Participating in the event were Piero Luigi Vigna, former Anti-Mafia Attorney General; Federico Gelli, Vice President of the Region of Tuscany; Giovanna Maggiani Chelli, spokeswoman for relatives of the victims; Cesare Angotti, Director of the Regional Office of Academic Affairs; as well as, from SUF, Director Barbara Deimling and Professor Natalia Piombino.

Vigna spoke of the urgent need to get today’s youth to reflect on legality, that they be well aware of the rules that society needs in order to function, saying “In a society where Mafia is active and powerful, man is no longer a citizen—he is a victim.” Thus, the goal of this project is to give tangible testimony of the commitment of the new generation for the culture for legality. The theme running through the project is art in the service of legality and the exchange of views amongst today’s youth—Americans and Italians alike—as they work together promoting the idea of art and beauty as a protection against barbarity of every kind. Gelli likened the combined forces of the involved students to a barrier against the Mafia.

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From the end of October through mid-December SUF students and students from five area schools, with their professors, will work together to better understand the themes relative to legality, meeting in their respective studios to create a work of art to give to the city of Florence, to be ultimately placed in via dei Georgofili. The students will produce a series of bricks, each one in a style of their choosing, that will then be assembled to form a monument. The single bricks symbolize the individuality of the students—the resulting monument symbolizes the ensuing strength gained by joining forces, a collective belief in the culture of legality. The metaphorical juxtaposition of the bricks evokes the reconstruction of via dei Georgofili after its destruction by the bomb, countering Mafia barbarism against the culture of a civil society, and serving as a reminder of the innocent lives lost.

This project follows a desire by SU Florence to make an important civic and social statement in favor of freedom and legality and against organized crime and its detrimental effects on mankind. SUF’s efforts to increase public awareness about the Mafia began in Spring 2006 when SUF hosted a conference entitled “Mafia and Legality” with the participation of high profile figures in the fight against organized crime, covered closely by the national press.

In Spring 2007 the project was further developed when SUF awarded twelve winners of a university-wide contest with a trip to Sicily which included two days in the town of Corleone helping farmers of the cooperative “Lavoro e Non Solo” work and make productive land confiscated from the Mafia. The students were accompanied by the Consul General, Nora Dempsey, and Vice President of the Region of Tuscany, Federico Gelli, as well as SUF Director Barbara Deimling, demonstrating the high-level support given to this initiative. Seeds of Legality has since become a widely popular feature of the SUF Volunteer Program, with participation by almost students. Every semester the visit sees the students doing different kinds of fieldwork, ranging from staking and pruning vineyards to protecting young plants from winter frost to planting tomatoes–the work that is done depends on the time of year.

Said Deimling, “I am very proud that we will participate in this project; it serves to underline our belief that the fight against the Mafia is not just Italy’s fight, but is the commitment of all of civilized man against the Mafia. Organized crime is a global problem and must be fought at a global level.”

The monument will be shown to the public for the first time on December 19th at the Region of Tuscany’s Festa della Legalità, an annual day-long event for youth in support of legality, before its placement in via dei Georgofili.