Challenges of organizing in Italy

Diego Galli

Pulcinella with acrobatsGiovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1793

“The vivacity of the Italian character, the love of spectacle and entertainment, the dominance of the Church, and above all the radical cynicism of Italians guarantee that a closely knit civil society cannot come into being in Italy”

Giacomo Leopardi, Discourse on the Present State of Customs of the Italians, 1824

Amoral familism

•“The inability of the villagers to act together for their common good or, indeed, for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family”

• Study of a small village in the south of Italy conducted in 1955 by the University of Chicago and later Harvard professor Edward C. Banfield

Civic traditions

• «Civic traditions turn out to be a uniformly powerful predictor of present levels of socioeconomic development, even when we hold constant earlier levels of development».

• Harvard professor Robert Putnam evaluates institutional performance of the 20 Italian regional governments over more than 20 years

• His central finding is that wide variations in the performance of these governments are closely related to the vibrancy of associational life in each region

Putnam traces the roots of civic traditions in northern Italy back to the self governing city-states of the late medieval period, which created a tradition of civic cooperation. In contrast, a Norman aristocracy imposed a hierarchical regime in southern Italy, creating a tradition of patron-client relationships that hindered cooperation.

Italy until 1861

A small town near Bologna

• Anzola dell’Emilia – BO, 12.300 residents

• 3 Catholic churches for a total number of 500-600 people that attend mass on a given Sunday

• A space used as a Mosque with 100 people on a given Friday

• A sport association with 1500 members (from kids to elders)

• A senior citizens center with more than 1000 members

• 20 volunteering associations

Tor Sapienza - Rome

Tor Sapienza - Rome

•12.713 residents

•1 big public housing development

•2 Roma people camp

•1 refugee residential center: 36 adolescents and 30 adults

The neighborhood committee has been petitioning the city council for years to ask:

- more police control- better waste removal- more lightning - stop of prostitution (and sexual intercourses) in the street...

...and the closing down of the illegal Roma people camp, where very often Roma people burn stolen cables to get copper and other metals that they later resell. This causes dioxin fumes

Roma people camp in Tor Sapienza

The Roma and immigration business

• Every year the city of Rome spends 24 million of euros for Roma camps that goes always to the same cooperatives, associations and specialized enterprises

• «This year I made € 40 million (US$ 49 million) off the gypsies. Do you know how much I profit from immigrants? Drug trafficking is less profitable». Wiretapped conversation of Salvatore Buzzi, president of the Cooperative 29 June, arrested on Dec 2 for the “Mafia in Rome” judicial trial

• Luca Odevaine, member of the Committee for Reception of Immigrants, who could influence the committee in favor of Buzzi’s cooperatives, allegedly received € 5,000 per month in bribes

• Former Rome mayor Alemanno, who was among those arrested on Dec. 2, told the Sunday Times in 2012 that “in the south of Italy, the Mafia is the problem, in Rome it is immigration.”

Roma camps and immigration centers in Rome

Roma camps in Milan (red ones illegal)

Political entrepreneurs of social distress

Matteo Salvini with Marie Le Pen

The numbers of the so called “invasion”

• 4.4 million foreign citizens in 2013, the equivalent of 7.4% of the total number of residents

• 500.000 are the estimate numbers of illegal immigrants

• On January 1, 2012 there were 58.060 refugees in Italy

• According to the Ignorance Index, an Ipsos MORI survey carried out in 14 countries, Italians are the least informed on the subject, believing that immigrants make up 30% of the population

The racket of public housing in Milan, Rome, Bologna, etc.

Milan, 17 november 2014: Police officers try to evict illegal occupiers of public homes.

Two different ways to get a home in the black market: the “political housing machine” comprised of social centers and antagonistic groups; and the “criminal housing machine”

Via Bolla Public building in Milan: one every two family occupies a home illegally

The electrical meters of illegal occupiers are switched to the condominium meter in order to have electricity. 22 out of 50 meters are tampered

Public housing and housing in Italy

• 30.000 families in the waiting list for public housing

• 5.000 families have illegally occupied a public home (only 300 of those have been evicted)

• Between 30 and 40.000 public houses are empty because regional bodies don’t invest in rehabbing

• 68.000 families will be evicted this year for delinquency: 7.743 in Rome, 4.924 in Milan, 3.492 in Turin. Evictions for delinquency are 30.000 a year: practically every day 140 families risk to lose their home

• Empty and non rented homes in Italy are around 200.000

Unemployment and poverty

• In 2013, Italy’s GDP contracted by 1.9%, bringing the economic activity back to a level slightly below that of 2000. The real GDP per capita level was the same as in 1996

• in 2013, employment has decreased by 478.000 units, -2.1% compared to 2012, more than during the worst period of the crisis (-380 thousand units in 2009).

• The unemployment rate of the population aged 15-24 years is 44.2% (17% in the US)

• Households living in conditions of relative poverty totaled 12.7% of resident households, thus making over 9.5 million poor individuals, or 15.8% of the resident population. Absolute poverty involves 4.8 million individuals

• Average earned net income for households is 29,956 euros, approximately 2,496 euros a month

• The level of satisfaction of persons with their economic situation pass from 69.2 percent in Bolzano/Bozen to 25.3 percent in Sicily

Accountability US version

• uninominal first past the post electoral system: 1 district = 1 representative

• direct relationship with constituents (non mediated by political parties)

• everyone can decide to run for office

• 15 alderpersons for Milwaukee

Milwaukee aldermanic map

Accountability - Italian version

• Political parties chose candidates• Offices are allocated in proportion of the votes to the parties• Voters can only express preferences inside party lists• In Rome: 9 political parties got enough votes to be elected• 48 city council members were elected city wide. They represent parties, not

districts

But Mafia knows how to hold them accountable through its “relational power”...

...using preference voting

• In local elections within each party candidates are elected on the basis of preferences expressed by voters

• Preference voting is used by 90% of the voters in Naples region, by 23,3% in Milan region

• «With 8-10.000 euros we get in the way and we gather 300-400 votes», telephone interception from a judicial investigation on Camorra in Naples.

• «The threshold to be elected in Milan is between 1.500 and 2.500 preferences, that means that the margin is a few hundreds votes. But independent candidates not backed by “preferences packets” have hard times being elected». Milan city council member from Radical Party, Marco Cappato

• «It is sufficient to control a part of the 30% of voters that use preference voting and channel them to the chosen candidate and the game is over. The others use preference voting in a free way on minor candidates. Therefore a small minority of voters decide the composition of our political class». An independent candidate letter found online

Other kind of broad based institutions: Churches in Italy

• Baptized catholics are 58.769.882 (97,9% of the population)

• 91% have received religious education, 88% in schools.

• 79% of the population declare to be catholic

• Nonetheless, 63% are in favor of some kind of legal recognition of gay couples

• 65% are ok with in vitro fertilization

• 63% are in favor of the opening of Mosques

Religion in Italy

• There are 226 Catholic dioceses, 25.706 parishes, 414 bishops, 30.518 priests, 15.815 members of religious orders and 3.707 deacons, 235.306 catechists.

• Catholic Church got 1,148 millions euros through State taxation in 2013

• The biggest protestant church, the Waldensians (Valdesi), got only 14,2 millions

• Catholic weekly church attendance is 18,5% of the population

• Jews are 35.000

• In Rome there are 234 congregations: 150 for catholics, 25 for Christian orthodox, 22 for protestants, 22 for muslims, 7 for Jews, 6 for buddhists, 1 for hinduists

Private donations to Churches - City of Parma

• Between 2012 and 2013 a 10-15% decreases in donations because of the crisis

• Monticelli parish has 4k parishioners and gets 30.000 euros a year (mass offers plus candles, easter benedictions and church improvement works)

• San Paolo Apostolo, 5k residents in the area, raised 10.000 euro. Not sufficient to sustain church expenses.

Unions

• The biggest Union, CGIL, has 5.700.000 members, 2.716.000 active workers and 2.900.000 retired. Its 2013 annual budget was 24 millions euros

• The 3 major unions total 12.301.000 members

• Only 30% are less than 34 years old

• Only 3% are precarious or unemployed workers

• 91,8% of active members have a regular permanent job contract

Precarious, self employed, unemployed

• Employees without a regular contract are 5,5 millions. 45% has an annul income of 15.000 euros. Only 46,2% survive without some help from their parents.

• Self employed pay 50% of taxes on their income. They are unorganized

• The biggest freelance organizations, ACTA, has only 322 paying members, although has managed to collect 60.000 signatures on a petition for the right to health insurance of free lancers

• 30.000 precarious workers demonstrated in Rome in april 2011

Immigrants

• Totally around 5 millions

• 86% live in the Centre and North of Italy

• Non-national foreign population (aged 15-64) shows similar level of education to nationals

• Non-national labour force represent 10.6% of the total labour force

• The employment rate for non-nationals is higher than for Italians (64.7% in comparison with 60.6%), as is the unemployment rate (14.1% and 10.3%, respectively)

• 2.114 le associazioni di migranti censite sull’intero territorio nazionale. Ben i tre quinti (59,7%) contano un numero di iscritti che, pur maggiore di 10, non supera i 100; solo il 12,2% ne ha tra i 100 e i 200. Quelle che vantano oltre 500 iscritti rappresentano solamente il 6%.

• oltre un quinto (21,1%) tra il 2010 e il 2014,

• Ben 8 su 10 (79,3%) hanno, come finalità, quella di favorire l’integrazione dei migranti

Immigrants associations

• 2.114 immigrants associations

• 59,7% have between 10 and 100 members

• 12,2% have between 100 and 200 members

• 6% more than 500 members

• 21,1% have been created between 2010 and 2014

• 79,3% have as a purpose the immigrants integration

Sharing economy

• 1000 registered GAS (Solidarity based purchasing groups): relationship based, local and ethical

• «As a medium-sized group has 25 families (nearly 100 people), we can suppose that in Italy nearly 200.000 people (nearly 50.000 families) are using them».

• Average annual family's expense in a GAS is estimated at 2.000 Euro, for a national total of 40,5 millions euros

• 85% on food, but recently many started to buy collectively “clean energy”, to sustain the local energy auto-production and to promote local initiatives supporting renewable resources

Sharing economy

• In the past two years, Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) and its Metro IAF sister organizations, have brought together more than 110 churches, synagogues, schools and other non-profit organizations for demonstration purchasing programs in electricity, natural gas and waste-hauling

• A similar strategy in Italy might find a good cultural understanding, represent a clear advantage of organizing, and give a new role to anchor institutions such as churches, schools, neighborhood groups, sport clubs, etc.

A community purchasing strategy for Italy?