I am enclosing the message sent by Alexander Helmann for last night
workers acne, beautifully-riu
growth in Cengio, read the beginning of this
-tion on behalf of the Laboratory
maximum publication
greetings Prof. Franco Xibilia
The first time I left for Roma Valbormida come in the summer of 2004, covavo already a vague intention to tell the history of acne, while not yet a clear idea in what form. Took me only an irrational and urgent need to see those places with my own eyes. The story of the "death factory" obsessed me for several years, namely since the day I happened in his hands an article by Aldo Grasso, who made a dramatic and poignant human dimension of history.
along the main road that goes from side to Cengio Piedmont was like crossing a century in a few minutes of anger, cries of miles of principals, barricades, phenol, working dog, of trade union struggles, life and death. That Cengio
acne is a story of one hundred years of pollution wild, of collusion between the political and industrial and tearing the social fabric of an entire territory, as two inalienable rights, the right to work and the right to health , have been clearly against each other, triggering a civil war. A war between the poor, because they are always the poor who pay the price for every war.
Acna The case is in my opinion the most dramatic image of the entity who calls himself anxiety improperly cost of development, accepting the absurd premise that development must necessarily generate unwanted side effects.
The choice to tell this story it based primarily on eyewitness accounts of people who have lived has resulted in a completely natural: just listening to the voices of those inside the Acna had worked and who had fought with all his forces. This suffering humanity, this dignity consists, this open wound, this pain could be witnessed not only with words of anger and tenderness, and land diamine: the words of those who were there, and unfortunately, in some cases, those who no longer exists.
For that I thank all the people who have offered their time, their memories and their words, because without them I would never be able to complete my work. Not this way.
The "bottom" meets the need to return a three-dimensional human anthropology and to our history, removing it from the dust of accedemie and distortions of power involved, certainly more inclined to remember as the Acna temple of fine chemicals than as "factory of the cancer."
What you are doing today with this archive, collecting oral histories (because it's the people who make history, even though they are often the authorities and lobby to write it), responds exactly the same logic and the same urgency down the memory to make it available to future generations. For this I am with you. Why knowing the past can provide the tools to decipher the present and lay the foundations for a more informed and more just future. Why
a better world is possible.
A better world is necessary.
Thank you very much.
Alessandro Hellmann (Rome, June 5, 2008)
