Cityfest

In ‘the two cities’ Giordani affirmed: “In politics, whatever structures, ideologies and denominations it has are lost much of the time, - and health and richness and even life is lost – because of the failure to build an accord between the citizens and those same leaders: egoism opens continuous fractures until the city is reduced, almost as a prelude to bombardments from ‘on high’, to a pile of moral ruins, city of the dead where men and women act like ghosts under the light of illusions.”
Giordani, the ‘ingenuous Christian’ as he loved to call himself, knows that new life for the city can be found in one place alone: “… and instead the Gospel calls for a city of life (…), where death has died”. (Igino Giordani, The two cities,  p. 405)

Citizenship should not be a good that is gratuitous but an enterprise for all, a condition and an identity that determines rights and social responsibilities. This holds true for those who are trying to become citizens in this way and for those who already are citizens. (Diversity in Unity - Manifesto of the Communitarian Network, cf document on website:
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/dwu_positionpaper_italian.html)

Demagogic rule flatters the people by encouraging only an elementary force; demagogic rule degrades people by regarding them on the level of a mass (of people).  The mass is a crude material, a material that merely “stands by”: it is degradation because it distances the people as a reality, a reality of humans, from the aspect in which the human reality reaches its full potential, the possibility of living as a person.  Which implies responsibility and conscience.  Consequently, the demagogue consciously or maybe not even unconsciously looks down on the people, in the same way that every flatterer looks down on the one s/he flatters. And his purpose is merely to reduce the people to a mass, to degrade the people as a mass so as to be able to dominate them and so that he becomes the only individual in front of the masses, above the masses. (Maria Zambrano, Democracy and the person)

“Cities have become dumping grounds for the problems caused by globalisation.  Its citizens and those that have been elected as their representatives, are faced with a task that they cannot even dream of completing, the task of finding local solutions to contradictions that are global”.  (Z. Bauman, Trust and fear in the city, page 19, Mondadori, 2005.)

“In every family is the life of the others as precious as one's own? Here is the seed of the culture of life, that should underlie every law and every social structure”.


Biological life, from conception to death, has an intrinsic dignity, which bestows upon each person a per se value. This dignity originates from the psycho-biological singularity, which is an objective scientific datum, about which everybody agrees. Indeed this uniqueness allows to understand the value that every single person has, her inner life, her thoughts, beyond any possible philosophical, religious, or ideological difference. Each person represents a unique and singular aspect of the richness of life, and she can express herself only if both the environmental and cultural contexts allow her to do it. Confronted with the ever new discoveries of science and technique, a natural need appears, namely the need to help society in promoting an integral culture of life, that can take into account every expression, phase, and condition. A unanimously shared value of life should be the base of any political and social committment.

Under this point of view, let us try and highlight what already exists:

1) Are there in your city cultural, institutional, voluntary actions, that show particular concern for the beginning and the end of life?
2) In your city are there  experiences of health operators, rearchers, citizens, which are perceived as innovative and look at the patient as a whole, at not only under a sheer bio-medical (i.e. illness, diagnosis, therapy) point of view?
3) In your city are there institutions or voluntary experiences, that give value to the solidarity attitude from citizens, and therefore give a contribution to participation to community life from sick, elder and disabled people, and their families?
4) Are there social agencies taht promoted the development of services for people with specific diseases?