When I started to collaborate with Pressenza in July, I wondered what meaning to give to this commitment to “alternative information”: the first impulse came from a rebellion against the growing manipulation that I notice every time I read the news published on-line by the traditional newspapers (I confess that I haven’t watched TV for years). I know that things aren’t like that, or that at least there are many missing–sometimes fundamental–elements, moreover there are interesting and positive experiences that don’t exist in the eyes of the majority of people because they don’t appear in the official information. Furthermore, the choice of news and the way in which it is presented invariably produce in me a sense of impotence, frustration and even desperation in front of a dark world, full of injustice and violence that appears impossible to overcome.
As often happens with me, once I’ve taken a decision it seems that everything falls into line and one after another things happen, coincidences appear that in reality aren’t so. All the pacifist and social action e-mail lists that I’m subscribed to and which until that moment I followed very distractedly, many times not even reading the message, now suddenly were full of interesting information regarding events and initiatives that I could give space to. The form that I chose and which I have more affinity for – interviews – has allowed me to establish and strengthen relationships with famous people and others who have always left me with something positive.
This disheartening darkness was lit up with many small lights and I realised that those hidden, comforting and creative experiences whose presence I could intuit, really existed and that a fundamental task is to make them known and show the relationships between them.
For me, this is the profound meaning of Pressenza and the many other realities we collaborate with and whose news and press releases we republish to raise awareness of their initiatives: to feed our hope, to show that around us are many more than appear to be, to build bridges between those who “resist” the violence in all its forms and to work to build a new world. Maybe we won’t see this new world, but it doesn’t matter: beyond the immediate results, what counts is making a contribution so that the accumulation of kindness, generosity, wisdom and compassion that has allowed humanity to advance since the dawn of time, may continue so that it may also advance in the future.
