Extract from “Contemporary Letters”, a writing book by Sara Manisera with Ariam Tekle and Emmanuelle Marechal – English
Extract from “Contemporary Letters”, a writing book by Sara Manisera with Ariam Tekle and Emmanuelle Marechal.
Dear,
it’s been too long since I last wrote to you. I am sorry and apologize for this long, unjustifiable absence. I heard from Ariam through messages, calls, and some quick interactions on Instagram. Emmanuelle, I don’t know much about you, I’m sorry but I hope that in this collapsing world there is some serenity in your life.
I have so much to say and to write to you. I’ll start with apologies, addressed to you and to myself.
To you because I couldn’t write to you as I wanted to.
Know that this is a space I care a lot about. It’s a precious space for me, and I don’t want my absence to be interpreted by you as neglect. If I haven’t written to you, it’s because I didn’t know how to make time for it.
I’ve always wanted to dedicate more time to writing, to reworking thoughts, pains, and joys, but this contemporary time prevents us, or at least it’s preventing me, from taking the time. Time to reflect, think, and write. In reality, I’m always thinking, or at least I try, but I constantly feel chased by a whole series of events, facts, commitments, news that steal my concentration and calm to dedicate myself only to words.
It’s a necessary exercise that I’m increasingly depriving myself of. Concentration is lacking even though the flow of thoughts and anger is incessant.
And it’s precisely anger that I would like to talk to you about. An anger that I see spreading around but which is fragmented, shattered into a thousand pieces like the society we live in. There are those who are angry at the government, those at the poor, those at the bourgeoisie, those at foreigners, those at blacks, those at journalists, those at doctors, those at God, those at everyone. It’s an anger that should be channeled, somehow guided, and we should have the foresight to build alliances, to rebuild bridges, to dialogue, to listen. But is there anyone capable of doing it? Is there anyone willing? How much energy does it take?
Why am I writing all this to you?
Because I observe, participate, and try to tell about the protests in Italy against the ongoing genocide by Israel against the Palestinian people.
Because I observe, participate, and try to tell about the protests of young people worried about the ongoing climate crisis.
Because I observe, participate, and try to tell about the anger of the workers at GKN in Florence, those in Taranto, the workers of Mondo Convenienza, the riders, the workers in the countryside, and the journalists.
Because I observe, participate, and try to tell about the anger of farmers who take to the streets with tractors without understanding, however, who the real enemy is.
Because I observe, participate, and try to tell about the anger of those who do not have the right to housing, of those who cannot afford a specialist visit, a kindergarten, a child, or rent an apartment.
And the more I observe, participate, the more I reflect on where we are going.
It seems like we’re in the post-1929 years. A frightening economic crisis caused by the interests of a few – banks, multinational corporations – a propaganda campaign that has been going on for decades against Arabs and racialized people; a fragmented society and a government of fascists.
On the other hand, a timid opposition still incapable of imagining the world to come.
Because, my dear friends, if we cannot imagine what will come next, anger will turn into blind and sectarian violence.
And instead, the time has come to unite forces, to bring together the different souls of the protests and try to do a work of dialogue but above all of imagining the society we want to build or at least leave tomorrow to those who will come after us.
We must give space to all our imagination, so that it generates words that can shape new realities. These are the words that should guide us in this exercise, but words require time to be shared, elaborated, and above all to make them become actions.
It is action that moves things, practice, doing. And it is in practice that we can transform imagination into action, into a new reality and society.
I am increasingly convinced of this. I hope that this thought I have just shared with you is not mistaken for arrogance.
To better explain my reasoning, I will start with a concrete example.
I will call it the “Auletta Uprising.” For over 15 years, the town where I chose to return to live has been governed by mean, arrogant, and selfish men. Cowards and quacks who have played on the needs of the most fragile and vulnerable people, passing off rights as favors in exchange for votes. A town where the community has been destroyed, where indifference reigns, where everyone is against everyone else. Racists and fascists. Brothers of Italy garnered 47% in this little village where nobody participates in any activity, where there is nothing actually, except bars, consumption, and slot machines. Some elderly people live in the countryside, but the atmosphere is as described above.
In June 2023, through a colleague, I learned about a project that the Municipality of Auletta would like to carry out in the area: a mega biogas plant that requires about 80 thousand tons of waste and refuse per year to operate. They want to build it in an uncontaminated place, in the small hamlet of Cerreta, where time seems to have stopped 50 years ago, where everything is in harmony, where raising your eyes you can see the majestic Alburni mountains and hear thousands of animals dedicated to singing.
I start to do my job, to study the papers, to talk to experts about these plants, to do business searches; from a company in Rome, I arrive at a holding company, from the holding company in Italy I arrive at another one in Luxembourg which in turn branches out to the UK, Albania, and Slovenia. Chinese boxes made to hide the true owners and to lose track of the origin of the money.
I gather everything and write a manifesto, telling the facts. Together with a group of young people, we start doing what needs to be done: going “house by house, street by street,” as someone said. We ring people’s buzzers, we talk to them and leave them the informative flyer. We organize a public meeting.
It’s August 10th, my 34th birthday. There is a great participation, at times unexpected. There is discussion, debate. Along with us, there is an engineer who knows well the technology of biogas. It’s a gathering built not just to say “NO and that’s it” but to say “things must be done according to the needs of the people living in certain areas,” not imposing projects that enrich a few at the expense of many. It’s a great success. The meetings and encounters continue. We decide to organize a social dinner made of pasta and beans, a traditional dish of Auletta’s peasants right there where the mega plant should rise. And then we organize another community dinner to raise funds; and then another event to talk about solutions to these mega plants imposed from above, namely energy communities. We continue to meet, to be together, to dialogue: we organize a community cinema, we screen “Upside Down” and “Waltz with Bashir”, in short, we try to bring culture. And then we organize a large unauthorized demonstration: 450 people march through the whole town to say no to the mega plant, to a plant that is being sold as an energy transition but will enrich the usual suspects, friends of Meloni and Crosetto, patriots with money in Luxembourg.
And while we do all these actions, we dialogue, we talk and choose the right words: common good, common home. We start from this simple idea. We must do things for the common good, for all of us. And that means protecting the environment, the air, the water, and the soil; it means making culture – cinema, books – accessible to all. It means reopening and occupying communal spaces, returning to community life. And while we build community, we start to imagine: social gardens, empty and abandoned houses turned into social apartments to give people who can no longer afford city life the right to housing; and then taking care of space, reducing waste, social shops where low-income people can shop without feeling obliged to vote for those who give them a food package as their right; with this group of people, we start to imagine the country we want. We imagine, we write, and we think… what if we ran for office? What if we made a radical list, with our ideas and program? The attacks begin. “You did it only for politics,” some say, as if real politics were the prerogative of a few, as if politics were not us, us with our choices. Everything is politics; it’s politics how we eat, how we dress, how we talk. The word “politics” is continuously mistreated to keep honest people from doing it, I am increasingly convinced.
In the little village, there will be elections in a few months, it’s still too early to change the course of things but sometimes I wonder if it’s not perhaps time to start doing politics again with our bodies, ideas, and imaginations. Perhaps in a small reality, it is easier to imagine the world to come; perhaps in less urbanized areas, where thousands of peasants have turned into emigrants and with them, their children and grandchildren, like an endless curse, one can rethink the meaning of hospitality. The internal areas of the Apennines can play a great role in this climate, social, and sense crisis that we are going through. They can open their doors wide and become new homes for those who are traveling from other places or for those looking for a healthier place to reconnect with nature. Perhaps it’s utopia? Who knows, I like to imagine the impossible, starting from words.
And it is precisely from words and their deadly yet potential impact that I would like to close this letter. It has been months since we have been witnessing a social genocide live on social media by the Zionist Israeli forces against the Palestinian population. If all this is happening, it is also and above all thanks to a media escort that has accompanied Israeli colonialism all these years. And by media escort, I mean the use of words, images, and narratives that have done nothing but dehumanize, distance, transform an occupation into something “complex”. Words create imaginaries and imaginaries create reality. I’ve been saying it for years. We know how certain words have created “imaginary enemies”; just think of the Cold War era when the communists were the “enemies” or, without going far, post-2001 and how the construction of an “imaginary enemy” around Arabs, Islam, and racialized people has allowed capital and power to maintain their status quo, dehumanizing and fueling violent racism.
The strength of capital and power lies in having the media escort, mass distraction means, controlled by a few actors, elites, and economic groups to ensure their survival.
And so, perhaps, to change things, we need to narrate ourselves, to create other spaces of imagination and narration that bring together social and environmental justice; anti-racism and class struggles; gender struggles and struggles against all forms of discrimination; antispeciesism and feminism. “What is the use of being alive if one does not have the courage to fight,” said Giuseppe Fava, a journalist and refined mind killed by the mafia in 1984. And perhaps it’s true. We will never see the change but it’s up to us to fight, starting to sow the seeds of the trees to come. The seeds of a new world, whose fruits will be eaten by someone else. This is the great responsibility we have: to stop thinking that we are the center. We are just tiny beings passing through this Earth. But to do that we need to create thought, another thought that creates culture. So that words turn into imaginaries and imaginaries into new realities.
*A hug from Saint Andrews, in Scotland where I am fortunate to present “The Earth Holds Me”.
And to you, I leave this poem by Rocco Scotellaro.
The earth holds me
A long road although deserted
where you can lead me I don’t see
a point of arrival.
Forget the living to find them again
with all the burden that I carry
of the life that was born to me
the flowers have grown the light ignites them.
Uproot me? the earth holds me
and the storm if it comes
finds me ready.
Back
it’s late
I return to those broken roads in dark crossroads.