A thirty-five years after the “Dear Extortionist” letter with which Libero Grassi publicly opposed the extortion racket in the pages of the Giornale di Sicilia, Palermo has once again begun to reflect on an issue that continues to shape the city’s economic and social fabric: Extortions in Palermo: who pays and why?
The meeting, promoted by the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Palermo, by Addiopizzo and by the Italian Scientific Society for Mafia and Anti-Mafia Studies (SISMA), was held in the DEMS “Borsellino” Hall and offered an opportunity to update the analysis and stimulate discussion on the phenomenon of extortion.
Compared to thirty-five years ago, choosing to oppose extortion has not only become possible, it no longer requires the kind of media clamour that, against his will, Libero Grassi was forced to face.
However, many still pay and among them are also those who, rather than merely enduring it, actively seek to be “put in order” in a context where protection money often represents a kind of quid pro quo that some business owners pay to Cosa Nostra in exchange for advantages.
There are shopkeepers and entrepreneurs who pay and do not report because they turn to their own extortionist to eliminate competitors, recover debts from their customers, settle disputes with their employees and resolve neighbourhood problems. These dynamics have always existed, but in some areas of Palermo today they are more prevalent than cases in which people pay out of fear and mistrust.
Over the course of the morning, the updated analysis was interwoven with the figure of Libero Grassi, who represented one of the main threads running through the discussion. His letter of 10 January 1991 remains a watershed moment in the history of grassroots anti-mafia activism: an act of radical rupture, carried out in a context in which standing up to the extortion racket meant finding oneself in a condition of isolation and solitude.
Today, thirty-five years later, that gesture continues to challenge the present and to raise pressing questions that still need to be fully explored.
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Press review
La Repubblica Palermo – Libero Grassi’s “Dear Extortionist” letter: this is how the anti-racket struggle began in Sicily
Giornale di Sicilia – 35 years after Libero Grassi’s letter to the “dear extortionist” [VIDEO]
La Sicilia – Extortion racket in Palermo, Addiopizzo: “Pizzo is no longer just about fear, now it is paid to obtain advantages”
Giornale Di Sicilia – 35 years after the “Dear Extortionist” letter, Palermo is still asking who pays the pizzo
