In Palermo, in the hamlet of Sant'Erasmo, for about a year there has been a small
and courageous coming and going of young people, who from the base of the Casadella Cooperazione - the site that houses them - move in the direction of viaTiro a Segno, public school directorate. ---- Spasmo is a path of militancy thatcomes from below by investigating and assuming the needs of the place and of itsinhabitants. It proposes to open an investigation starting from education throughthe creation of a popular school, an instrument of self-determination andawareness-raising. The intent, however, is not just to be a popular school,rather the broader goal and aspiration concern the desire to create a space thatwelcomes and transforms, starting with education. That's why Spasmo: SpazioPopolare Sant'Erasmo. - says Rossella, a young Sicilian militant active withinthe association.Why precisely in Sant'Erasmo, Federico?It is a point of the city historically linked to the sea and in particular tofishing activities, which in the last five years has seen its fabric change andincreasingly divided internally between the sea side and the mountain side of thestate road. If, in fact, the docks and buildings facing the sea - with theexception of the Padre Messina Institute - have been restructured and now housetrendy clubs and restaurants with prices comparable to those found in thehistoric centre, the part of neighborhood that develops along via Tiro a Segno isincreasingly left to itself. These two very different trajectories can be tracedback to urban regeneration programmes, which see the city's seafront as a placeto be developed and made attractive to tourists and consumer citizens from otherparts of the city, willing to pay unaffordable prices for the inhabitants of viaTiro in Segno, whose houses are instead dilapidated due to lack of maintenanceand devoid of those minimum services for citizens such as, for example,electricity and sewerage.I take a walk away from the sea, I start walking along the road choked by highwalls, the cars and trucks whiz by in the fierce absence of pedestrian crossingsand traffic lights. To my left a row of burnt, overflowing, rotting garbage bins.Then a large abandoned construction site, "the eco-monster", flanked by abattered football pitch full of life and occupied houses.It is the children who guide me inside the construction site, but only the boys:girls are forbidden.As I grope my way through the piles of rubbish, the children run ahead of me,kicking the rubbish, climbing the low walls, venturing up the skeleton of thewide, unprotected stairs. It is a real open-air dump, evidently used for drugconsumption. The kids confirm to me that "here the addicts do crack" pointing toplastic bottles and aluminum remains.The eco-monster is a symbol of this divergence in development and of theinterests present in the area: if in the space of five years we have been able totake over and put an entire quay under economic conditions, the fact that we havenot managed to respect a demolition order reveals the lack of interest of theprevious administrations in the area not far from the sea. - explains Federico,to whom I ask what outcome he hopes for the structure and the place - On November21st there was the first meeting of the technical table of the Municipality,which continues to foresee the demolition, but if we really have to hypothesizesomething provocative, personally I hope that that structure will be left whereit is, made safe, illuminated and that it will be returned to those who havesuffered it in recent years. That it becomes a place where the inhabitantsthemselves will create something, that it is a playground, a multifunctionalspace, an open meeting center, capable of being crossed without givingconstraints of any form.How do you develop folk high school? What were your first contacts with thefamilies and what relationship do you find today, after a year?The popular school path was born from street education interventions, from activelistening to those who already crossed the territory in question, as an activist.- Giulia starts to tell me - We came in contact with families and with * children* thanks to the previous relationship they had with the place that hosts us. Bydefining a pedagogical line within Spasmo, which opposes welfare logics and whichplaces the person at the centre, we presented ourselves as a project incontinuous change, always listening and cooperating. After a year, the thought ofa popular and therefore political, transformative pedagogy was consolidated bothamong us and with the families. Trust is building, the path is starting to befocused by everyone *, but we are always in a phase of listening to the realneeds of the territory and of the people. We proceed very slowly and rightly so. The popular pedagogy to which Spasmo refers essentially starts from Freire andDolci and embraces all that practice which believes that the pedagogic is ineverything and that it is inseparable from politics. There is an air ofcontamination and exchange, albeit with common foundations. There are those whodeal with libertarian pedagogy, who is a psychologist *, who is a philosopher *,who is an artist.And the use of the schwa, in the midst of all this effort and this struggle, canonly strike me. I talk to Tony about it.As a group we have always paid particular attention to feminist claims, which iswhy adhering to the use of schwa and broad language is a natural step,nevertheless a necessary one. All of us militants of Spasmo believe that culturalchange can only take place if we all participate in the innovations and culturaldemands that arise in our time. Alongside and at the same pace as all women andnon-binary people, towards the true and total self-affirmation of each *.Personally, as a man I find that paying attention to language is a mentalexercise, which is slowly changing me too in the way I view myself and observesociety.Spasm feels alone *?Not at all. - Giulia clarifies - Of course, the days are not easy, but thanks tothe birth of the network of popular schools in Rome, it is thought to build apath of comparison and exchange of good pedagogical and political practicesstarting precisely from diversity, but also from the similarities that theterritories in which we fight offer us.There is no doubt that Palermo, not unlike any other city, needs to implement itsown constant practice of liberation from below. That a small group of youngpeople manage to dream of it and start doing it, with the first truly libertarianresults, is by no means a foregone conclusion.Désirée Carruba Toscanohttps://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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