As summer comes to Puglia, in South Italy, increasing numbers of dead locusts can be found in the countryside. Gigantic swarms of these insects are currently wrecking havoc from East Africa to India and even Sardinia in what is quickly becoming a global crisis, and in the midst of a serious drought, the main trigger for this pest, farmers in the Mediterranean region are getting nervous.
On the 30th of May, the first public assembly after the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic was held in Napoli’s Piazza Plebiscito, gathering social movements, activists, art workers and many others for an afternoon of discussion on grassroots responses to the pandemic and the looming crisis.
According to a recent report by the Polytechnic of Turin, if the current mindset on dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic persists, in the near future Italy might need millions of disposable, single-use breathing masks per month. We all know very well where these masks will go after being used once, and since wearing them might become compulsory at work, in shops, on public transport and even in the streets of our cities, we must learn how to make our own, re-usable masks, unless we want to discharge on Mother Nature the cost of yet another one of our collective delusions.
A group of women from different working backgrounds offers several proposals for a “phase 2” of the Covid-19 emergency that also addresses social needs, and not only productive ones. We need a politics that goes beyond the management of emergencies, and tries to imagine a possible world. By Tristana Dini, Ilaria Durigon, Barbara Buoso and Sara Gandini.
Cisternino – 7th of May, 2020.