The Grassroots Antimafia

Abstract

Chapter 4 focused on the ‘Antimafia dei delitti’, literally the ‘Antimafia of crimes’, or the means by which the tools of investigation and prosecution of organized crime were strengthened after the Palermo murders of 1992. We now turn to the ‘grassroots’ Antimafia or Antimafia dei diritti — literally ‘of rights’ — to examine how different sectors of Italian society reacted to the atrocities and whether grassroots activism, by refusing cohabitation with criminality and reclaiming rights that had been surrendered to the Mafia, has set in motion an irreversible cultural transformation.

The removal of the causes that constitute the strength of Cosa Nostra can only be accomplished by the restoration of faith in public administration. No influx of financial resources, however massive, will produce beneficial effects if the State and the institutions in general are not able and do not appear to be impartial holders and distributors of the trust necessary for the free and orderly progression of civil life. Otherwise the recourse to alternative organizations that ensure materialistic advantages will continue and the consensus around them, whether expressed or passive, will continue.

Paolo Borsellino, January 1989¹