by Marco Pannella

"L'Espresso", 10 September 1989

Following is an excerpt of a project submitted by Marco Pannella (1) as early as in 1989 for the city of 2000. It could have been a program of democratic alternative. The project of introducing a Nathan List (2) failed, but no one has since introduced a long-term plan.

ABSTRACT: We need to prepare now for the Jubilee of year 2000, but also for the Rome of year 2000, making into a capital under three aspects: "Catholic, Italian, and European". It will be necessary to resort to the contribution of many subjects, especially cultural (the University, etc.). The new city, in alternative to a wild and unrestricted growth, will need to be linked to the other cities of Latium and create with them "its new identity". There are countless projects, but there is no political subject capable of using them without resorting to the "usual party lists" and going beyond the level "of the leading class of the Risorgimento", which conceived the "Siccardi bills". Unfortunately today we have instead the Concordat wanted by Craxi (3), against which the radicals pose the problem of "the new Treaty".

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 26 November 1993)

The Jewish Rome, the lay Rome, the Christian Rome, the Muslim Rome (which will come, and it is better to plan it, organize it and prepare it now), the "classical" Imperial and Republican Rome, will need to rise above and converge with the "Catholic Rome of Year 2000". In this process it will need to form the new Rome, which will be three times "capital": Catholic, Italian, European. This project will call for a huge work in terms of studies, researches on the history, on the traditions, on the aims, on the philosophies and literatures, on the sciences. This work must involve faculties and university, from the State university to the Gregoriana university, and any other institution that represents the "Roman" culture. Rome will be a "show-case" but at the same time also a "factory"; a "festival" of culture and science, of arts and religions, of dialogue and of democracy and tolerance. The city will need to organize symposiums, publications, courses that converge into the city that plays host.

To that end places for these activities will need to be found, so that they may be the opportunity for a long-term project. We can imagine, and politically advocate, that the project that was started in Assisi in an incomplete way can be fully achieved in and by "Rome". The most eminent exponents of the religions of the world, will be together and united to celebrate and announce the paths of life and the rescue of the world, while the Nobel prize winners will have unprecedented opportunities to work together and exchange ideas...

Places need to be created in Rome, from now on, millimetre by millimetre, but in the right direction. And the "right direction" should be understood literally: the direction that, from Ernesto Nathan on, has appeared to be the only alternative to an unrestricted and wild destruction of the city. For a city the 'polis' meant territory, environment, and not just an urban centre. A city that must include city parks and natural parks, archeological parks and marine parks, that be must linked to other cities of Latium and with them represent its new identity, and theirs. A "capable" city, with "extraordinary" or "emergency" and ordinary reception facilities, not only in terms of men and women, but also in terms of flora and fauna, of spaces and empty spaces.

The project calls for the cooperation and contribution of the M.I.T. and of the London School...with an aim to finally beating the poor and destructive mediocre interests that have represented the fear owing to which Rome died as a city and as "polis" in the twentieth century, summoning far more powerful economic and financial interests. A political will and a project of this kind would be in the condition not only of summoning them but also of defending itself from them. All this, in itself, could represent nothing but hot air; no longer if it becomes awareness of the time, of the objective to be achieved: 2000 and the bimillenary. This is what the administrations and the huge projects of Latium and Rome, also owing to the party "containers", the only true "material" or "real", existent institutions, within which they could move, squander and waste, have lacked so far. There is no need to look far for the projects, the studies and the paintings. There are countless programs. Simply it takes believing in the

m. The choice would be vast. The drawers and paper bins are full of projects, some could be scrapped and others could be used instead of being ignored after fortunes have been squandered to develop them.

At any rate, with respect to the problems of Rome, at the deadline of 2000, the Bimillenary will be held in any case, and will call for a new political and administrative force. So what is the meaning of resorting to the usual party lists, the PLI or of the PSI, which will have no effect at all on the city or leave things as they are? The grandeur (such it was compared to now) of the leading class of the Risorgimento was that it conceived the laws that included the bills promoted by Siccardi, the Catholic Siccardi. The clerical-fascist treaty could only be based on the territorial solutions of that law. And despite all our struggles it has not been touched in spite of the fact that it was radically redesigned.

The "new" Concordat is, considering the period in which we live, less tolerable and decorous that the one of 1929. While the signatures of Cardinal Gasparri and Benito Mussolini will remain in history as a small example of a Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement, the signatures of Cardinal Casaroli and Bettino Craxi (acknowledgment should be given to the Vatican that the socialist president urged the concordat with urgency and superficiality) will fade away.

For ten years, and the documents of the Chamber can prove it, we have been posing the problem of the new Treaty. Not just to eliminate its shameful parts and its rotten fruits, but to reintroduce, if possible, new laws to promote the interests both of the "state" and of the Church.

Translator's notes

(1) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective

of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

(2) NATHAN ERNESTO. (London 1845 - Rome 1921 - assumed Italian citizenship in 1888). Politician, at the beginning of the century he headed a lay and reformist coalition to conquer the local administration of Rome, until then controlled by exponents of land speculation linked to the most reactionary and clerical forces. As mayor of Rome (from 25 November 1907 to 4 December 1913) he achieved major social reforms of the Roman local administration. A Jew and member of the Masonry, Nathan represented a never forgotten nightmare for Roman reactionary forces. In 1989 Marco Pannella launched a project called "Lista Nathan" for the administrative elections which he proposed to the lay forces of the Left. The proposal was not accepted.

(3) CRAXI BETTINO. (Milan 1934). Italian politician. Socialist, deputy since 1968. Appointed secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1976, he operated important changes in the party's phisiognomy, turning it into the core of a wide project of institutional and other reforms and of unity of the socialist forces.