“A mass of teachers and students will defeat Mafia”

“ A mass of teachers and students will defeat the Mafia and not the army.” So Alberto Nobili, solicitor of the Republic in Milan, ended his meeting with young people in Lonate Pozzolo, which is organized within the project promoted by “Gruppo di lavoro per la legalità” (Team work for legality), by  “Ammazzateci Tutti” ( kill us all)  and by the  middle schools. In the town where the ‘ndrangheta  had its roots in the southern part of Varese’s province, Mr.Nobili told the fight against Mafia without leaving out an important point: “Mafia can win only if there is silence and indifference by people.” The story about criminal organisations  in Lombardy shows it, this story evoked to young people with some memories  and numbers : “In 1977 in Milan and surrounding areas there were 33 kidnappings. It was told that the Mafia were not in the north ,but it was already working. Then there was the drug period, in 1986 in Milan 140 deaths were reported”. But since then it was been thought that Mafia were only “southerners’ stuff” , that the North was not involved. It was not so and only after many years the Mafia phenomenon started to be tackled and it started to arrange coups. But in the meantime the Mafia has also changed the strategy, just  choosing  the silence and the low profile, after the terroristic strategy  in 1992, after many years of the murder of priests, educators, magistrates, police officers, journalist. Also with drugs it has changed strategy, from cocaine which caused to much social alarm to heroin, the synthetic drugs, because “ you cannot see cocaine, you don’t see the deaths.”

 

In  Lonate Pozzolo they are trying with a movement and a project that is working a lot on young people, on public opinion in order to speak about it and in order to spread a legal culture: there is  “Gruppo di lavoro per la legalità” (a Team work for legality) and soon there will be a seat of "Ammazzateci tutti" ( Kill us all), there is also a strong dedication in the school almost reinforced after the vandalism event in which the middle school of Lonate was slashed. “We need to break the silence that the members of the Mafia love. They are scared about two things :confiscation of their goods, it would remove the symbol of their power and of their culture” said Mr. Nobili . But the anti-mafia solicitor also exposed some criticism, when he spoke about the ’90s period, when he spoke about the link between public opinion, judges and security forces seemed to create a turning point: ”twenty years ago we lived an illusion that things were changing. But things went in a different way.” The latest operations- Bad Boys in the Province of Varese, then the endless fight against the ‘ndrangheta, the most recent fight against camorra- have they truly attacked the power of the Mafia? ”They have been the greatest arranged coups  against the organizations of the Mafia, but they are not enough to stop the criminal business , the final victory is not near .”