A Modestissima Proposal. Per EXPO e migranti

“A Modestissima Proposal”

Ricevo dal geniale Giovanni Veloce (chissà non sia uno pseudonimo…) che gentilmente mi autorizza a rendere pubblico su GLI STATI GENERALI. (GP)

“A Modestissima Proposal”

The advent of 50,000 homeless refugees, some of them pushed by civil wars, others by hunger, has led to a crisis of well-being focused on the Central Station of Milan. Hundreds of desperate new-comers currently sleep in silvery body bags, previously used for victims of fires and wars, often for corpses. Aside from creating a serious sanitary situation, with 500 cases of scabies reported and the perpetual odor of urine and feces in the air, this mass of lumpen-migrants presents a dreadful welcome scene for the thousands of tourists coming to visit the Milan EXPO. While most people see the refugees as a threat, they should be recognized as heroes, having made a miraculous journey, from which thousands have lost their lives. The refugee problem in Italy, which daily receives illegal boatloads coming on rubber rafts and upturned dinghies, should not be confined to Milan, the Lombard Region or the national government, but should be recognized as a mandate for the international community. That France has already closed her borders signals how much it is endangering European unity. How the lives of these uprooted people are handled could offer the key toward the peace of the future.

“A Modestissma Proposal” looks to Jonathon Swift’s satirical broadside with a similar name, published in 1729 during the onslaught of famine in Ireland, which proposed eating newborns as the solution to hunger. While the current proposal precludes cannibalizing the new arrivals, it is addressed to the issue of food on display at the EXPO. What better way to internationalize the problem and put to use the horrendous waste of resources that have convened at Rho, where the governments of 56 countries, untold multinational food companies, and the UN have dumped a ton of money for a media event of dubious outcome. Let’s invite the refugees to the EXPO. Here a contractual system of exchange could be established as “food and shelter for services” (Curitiba, Brazil in the 1970s offers an excellent example). Each pavilion could take responsibility for a quota of poor refugees. If the rather paternalistic title of the EXPO is “Feeding the Planet”, why not follow through on the prospect and start feeding these needy people with the throw-away food of the fair; and then let them improvise shelters in the vast unused spaces created for the fair. The crisis demands creative actions and not well-intentioned rhetoric. It is not a permanent solution, but the future promises that the flow from troubled parts of the world to the more stable parts will not subside, and if it is not approached with international cooperation, will be truly one of the many catastrophes that await us.

Giovanni Veloce

17-06-2015

(in attesa di volontari* per proposta di traduzione IT)