ABSTRACT: The radical campaign against world hunger is the work of two or three thousand people, for the most part students, pensioners, housewives and employees, who together form the Radical party. 80% of the Radical Party's resources is invested on information. Honest and inactive people force the Radical Party to struggle in desperate conditions; these people should realize that the Radical Party can't make it without a helping hand.

(RADICAL NEWS No. 5, 20 February 1983)

Once again I will straightforward until brutality, but truth is brutal: since 1979, almost the entire action in Europe and in Italy in particular against world hunger has been organized, supported, financed, night and day, and carried on in every possible way by the two or three thousand members of the Radical Party, for the vast majority employees, pensioners, housewives, students, unemployed.

This same newspaper costs over L.50 million: we considered it our duty to try to inform at least two hundred pensioners and as many citizens, enabling them to choose in conscience and act responsibly with respect to their life and other people's lives. We did it to enable them to grasp the extraordinary occasion of the Easter march and the march in support - or not - of the petitions that represent the institutional means to try to realize not only their interests, but also political choices which a vast majority of Italians declare to advocate, and which ultimately substantiate also the hopes and the indications of the Pope and of the President of the Republic.

But if it has been possible for thousands of mayors who represent 28 million citizens, for thousands of intellectuals and parsons to unite, to gather, to launch an appeal, as a result of a work which involved dozens of thousands of phone calls and letters and thousands of hours of work, which has involved the payment of printing works, the distribution of petitions in their support throughout Italy; if it is possible for 63 countries of Africa, of the Pacific and of the Caribbean to be united in supporting this position politically; if it is possible for the winners of Nobel prizes to take initiatives, to unite, to take on active commitments; if the Belgian Parliament is on the verge of passing a law equivalent to the one of the Italian mayors proposed by the European parliament at our initiative, if everywhere people take pains to censure us, to keep these initiatives in the dark, to leave things as they are, all this happens because the Radical Party alone has promoted, financed, supported and informed on

such actions.

This way, 80% of the money coming from enrolments and subscriptions is in practice spent to make possible this hope and this policy against world hunger and for the quality of life in Italy, without power, without councillors, without bribes and without party power and its methods and realities.

The list is practically endless: as far as pensions is concerned, the same thing is happening or about to happen; the same can be said for alternative energy, peace and disarmament (as well as against sterile, irresponsible "pacifisms" and demagogic and phony "neutralisms"), the struggle for the moralization of public affairs.

And everywhere the requests to cooperate with the Radical Party are on the rise. Every time we are reprimanded for not doing everything. We are told that we are the only ones who can and know how to do everything, if only we wanted to.... All this is possible, and probably even true. But it is equally true that the Italian people, the honest and well-meaning people, force us more and more to struggle as if we were extraordinary, exceptional creatures; in the best of hypotheses, we are told to go ahead, to do things, but then we are not given any support.

Sixty million on the one side, a couple of thousand on the other. Also, we spend our share of public funds exclusively on structures and services which are alien from the party; we spend the money to enable Radio Radicale to provide live coverage of all parliamentary proceedings, the congresses of all parties, the meetings of the exponents of the various political forces and of the unions, the summits of the Confindustria (1), the daily reading of all newspapers, the hotlines, with their space for freedom and popular intervention, and all the other programs of Teleroma 56 and Canale 66 with their information and debate service which covers every subject, including sports.

But all this cannot continue: it will inevitable be terminated, from a civil an political point of view, by the establishment, by party power, by politics based on falsehood, corruption, incompetence and fiscal injustices against the poor and the honest.

We can foresee what would happen if a few thousands of you, pensioners, workers, students, men and women who live coherently with their honesty (which consists of acting, not omitting and stealing) decided to grasp this unique occasion to count, in terms of values, of quality of life, of personal and civil growth.

It is obvious that it would no longer be necessary to resort to hunger and thirst strikes, to nonviolent actions on the part of those who practice them, in addition to they money they offer, the time they devote, the increasingly intense activity.

In any case, we wish to make it clear that we cannot make it, we cannot hope and authorize any hope unless many others, and each person reading us now, relinquish the passivity, the indifference for themselves and for other people to which this ruinous political life is reducing the country and the people.

Subscriptions and enrolments are literally vital and urgent to us, to enable us to do what we are doing, and which concerns and involves every identity, both that of the Catholics believers, of the lay people, of the socialists and communists and of those who continue to choose the "Right" in good faith, hoping for order, honesty, civil and human peace.

Hundreds of thousands of people, in Italy, dozens and dozens of millions worldwide, the crowd of people of good will, are moved and touched by the film on the life of Gandhi. Why then extinguish the Gandhi who lives in each of us? Why put out the active and miraculous hope?

This newspaper contains much information, many addresses, many deadlines, and ultimately many instruments to act, to grow and make grow, to give and receive a helping hand: instruments which range from financial contributions to the cognizance of the reasons and conditions of the Easter march.

We are waiting for your answer, we truly are.

(1) Confindustria: Italian Manufacturers' Association, established in 1919