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Day of Remembrance and Commitment (21st March)

Definition
The “Day of Remembrance and Commitment in memory for the innocent victims of Mafias” is an annual commemoration for awareness raising and mobilization in memory of Mafia's victims in Italy and abroad.

Libera's network of anti-Mafia associations first organised it in 1996. The first day of spring (21st March) was chosen for this event because it “epitomises [both] rebirth and life” and the beginning of a journey of “long term” commitment and hope. In the words of Nando Dalla Chiesa, one of the civil and social anti-mafia movement’s main scholars, it has become “over time, one of the largest recurring events in the calendar of civil Italy.”

In March 2017, the Italian State recognised it (Law 8 March 2017, No. 20) as “National Day of Remembrance and Commitment in memory of Mafia victims.”

Historical background
The idea of a day to unite memory and commitment in the name of mafia's innocent victims arose around the mid-1990s. It came at the end of a season of great political upheavals and exceptional criminal violence in Italy’s history. On one hand, the end of the cold war had provoked a crisis in the post-war Italian political system, which ended up overwhelmed by the anti-corruption investigations launched in Milan by the “Mani Pulite” (Clean Hands) Pool. On the other hand, and at the same time, in 1992, the Court of Cassation confirmed the sentence in the first massive trial of “Cosa Nostra” in Sicily. This triggered an unprecedented mafia offensive, culminating in the attacks of Capaci and Via D’Amelio in Sicily and, on the mainland, in Via dei Georgofili in Florence, Via Palestro in Milan, San Giorgio al Velabro and San Giovanni Laterano in Rome.

While the political crisis generated institutional and party innovations, the Mafia massacre provoked firm and impassioned civil and social opposition. This gave further impetus to the anti-mafia movement. In particular, between the summer of 1994 and the spring of 1995, extremely serious episodes in Sicily, in Capaci and in Via d'Amelio in Palermo, led to the creation of a national network of associations. This was given the name “Libera. Associations, names and numbers against mafia.” One of the newborn associative network’s first acts was to conceive and convene, a day of memory and commitment in memory of Mafia's innocent victims on 21 March 1996.

Genesis of the event
Luigi Ciotti, founder of Libera and its president since its creation, states that the original stimulus to dedicate a day to recalling the names of all the innocent victims of the mafias arose during meetings with two mothers of police officers murdered by Cosa Nostra. Carmela Montinaro is the mother of Antonio Montinaro, head of Judge Giovanni Falcone's escort team, killed in the Capaci attack. Saveria Antiochia is the mother of Roberto Antiochia, killed while he was on voluntary escort to Commissioner Ninni Cassarà. Mr. Ciotti remembers sitting next Carmela Montinaro during an official commemoration of the massacre of Capaci, when at some point she clutched his arm, confiding in tears the pain of never seeing her son's name pronounced on those occasions.

From this lament, Mr. Ciotti drew a dual intuition. On one hand, a new direction would be given to the social commitment against the mafias. On the other, he found continuity between this new path and the one he had previously initiated with Gruppo Abele of Turin: “it was suddenly clear to me that, as in the fight against drugs or marginalization, also in the fight against mafias, we had to start over again from the basics of human relations. From listening to people and recognition of their rights,” starting precisely from the right to one's name. “That woman had the right to hear her son's name spoken. Instead, in the different speeches, her child was always remembered only as “one of the escort members.” This journey crossed the path autonomously initiated by Saveria Antiochia, who after her son’s death, had begun in the media, in schools, and also in politics a proud, energetic and courageous activity of denunciation, testimony, and fight against mafias. An early participant in Libera's activities, Saveria Antiochia made a decisive contribution to the implementation of the Day’s first edition, motivation and organisation of the first group of victim family members, and to implementing and verifying the first list of victims' names. So, while Carmela Montinaro had made everyone aware of the right to the name, Saveria Antiochia exemplarily embodied, from an ethical and practical point of view, the other pillar of the 21st March Day: the link between memory and commitment.

The event and the principles of the 21st March Day
The “Day of Remembrance and Commitment” event requires months of planning, in schools and associations, in Libera's territorial network, and with the families of innocent victims. This preparation period is fundamental for reflection and training in schools and in the association network, to agree on the theme and the choice of the annual “slogan” that accompany the 21st March. They are part of a step-by-step path (called “I cento passi verso il 21 marzo” - The One Hundred Steps Towards 21st March) that leads to the Day, making it a unique moment, able to stimulate a renewed commitment to Libera’s many objectives.

The Day is marked by an initial march of about 3 km through the city streets, a different city being chosen each year. It culminates with a public and shared reading of the list of the names of the innocent victims of all the mafias. The march is open to the victims’ families, who hold the banner promoting the Day, while the public reading of the list is entrusted to several voices belonging to victim relatives or association members and spokespersons of institutions engaged in the fight against the mafias. This list is the result of Libera’s constant monitoring and updating in collaboration with the victims’ families and all those who suggest new stories of victims. It meets two essential criteria. The first is certainty of the victim’s innocence, while the second is the need to express a non-selective memory. This means that the list includes all the innocent victims of the mafias regardless of their role in society, positions, nationality, gender, or religious belief. Consistent with this approach, which accords equal dignity to every innocent victim, the list is read on a purely and strictly chronological basis.

The principles that find expression in this “lay rite” are the right to the name and therefore the right to remembrance and the strong link between memory and commitment. The right to a name is to be understood in a non-legal, 'civil' sense, but eminently ethical and existential: “the name, for everyone, is the first certificate of existence; it testifies to our uniqueness as human beings, the importance of our individual history.” Through recovery of the individual identity and reconstruction of the history and context of individual lives, a living memory becomes possible: the innocent victims of the mafias are torn from oblivion, their dignity as people is recognized, and the family members’ memory of the person is given a value of hope and a positive, active, socially shared meaning. “Returned to their name and to the integrity of their story, the dead are no (...) longer remains to be mourned but lives to be preserved;” that is, to be protected, honoured, and narrated. Through this remembrance exercise, a commitment is made so that, through it, “the value of life is established, not as an instrument of power but a heritage to protect; important pieces of the history of our country are reconstructed, closely linked to these people’s lives; we can see the links with our lives and the responsibility that awaits us; an ethical profile is defined, and the generative dimension of change, contained in the commitment, is given shape.”

Individual editions
Over the years, the “Day of Remembrance and Commitment in memory of Mafia's innocent victims” has evolved considerably in all respects, while maintaining its course and basic principles. In particular, it has grown exponentially in numbers, being differentiated and articulated from an organizational point of view, and is enriched by further opportunities of meeting, analysis, testimony and awareness.

Research on the mafia's innocent victims has allowed expanding the list of names from about three hundred on the first edition, to over one thousand in the twenty-sixth edition. Between the '90s and the early 2000s, the social utility of the fight against mafias undertaken by Libera started to express itself in its tangible forms. In the second edition, held in Niscemi, the Sicilian town’s first playground was inaugurated and named “Piazza 21 Marzo,” a gift from Libera. The Day was dedicated to children that year, on the tenth anniversary of the deaths of Giuseppe Cutruneo and Rosario Montalto, two Niscemi children aged 8 and 11, innocent victims of the mafias. In the third edition, held in Reggio Calabria, the “Guide to the application of Law 109/1996 on the social use of mafia assets” was presented at lower secondary school “Diego Vitrioli.” In Casarano, in 2000, all participants received, as a gift, a sample of “Libera” extra virgin olive oil, produced in the lands confiscated from Bernardo Provenzano. Starting from the 2000s, in-depth seminars began to be held, and even concerts, as in the Turin edition of 2006. Since the eighth edition, held in Modena in 2003, the attention paid to the mafias’ expansion outside the borders of Southern Italy also brought the Day of Remembrance and Commitment to several cities in central-northern Italy. They would be held in Turin in 2006, in Milan in 2010, in Genoa in 2012, in Florence in 2013, Bologna in 2015, and Padua in 2019.

Since 2006, a meeting among the victims’ families has become a tradition for the eve of the Day of Remembrance and Commitment. In this sense, the importance of the eves of the nineteenth and twenty-second editions was exceptional: in Latina, in 2014, Pope Francis held a prayer vigil before meeting the victims’ relatives, while in Locri, in 2017, Italian President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella met with them. Five hundred participants attended the first edition. This number increased to more than two hundred thousand at the twentieth edition, held in Bologna in 2015. Beginning from the following edition, the twenty-first, the national event, which was held each year in a different city, first in Italy, then also in Europe and in the rest of the world, added a growing number of local events, even thousands. In each, the secular rite of public and shared reading of the list of names is repeated simultaneously. In the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 25th edition, scheduled in Palermo, was successfully moved to the Internet and social media.

List of individual editions: 1. 1996 – Rome 2. 1997 - Niscemi (Caltanissetta) 3. 1998 - Reggio Calabria 4. 1999 - Corleone (Palermo) 5. 2000 - Casarano (Lecce) 6. 2001 - Torre Annunziata (Naples) 7. 2002 – Nuoro 8. 2003 – Modena 9. 2004 - Gela (Caltanissetta) 10. 2005 – Rome 11. 2006 - Turin 12. 2007 - Polistena (Reggio Calabria) 13. 2008 – Bari 14. 2009 – Naples 15. 2010 – Milan 16. 2011 – Potenza 17. 2012 – Genoa 18. 2013 – Florence 19. 2014 – Latina 20. 2015 – Bologna 21. 2016 – Messina 22. 2017 - Locri (Reggio Calabria) 23. 2018 – Foggia 24. 2019 – Padua 25. 2020 – (scheduled in Palermo, then moved to the Internet and social media due to the covid-19 pandemic) 26. 2021 – (in Rome and other Italian cities with live socially-distanced initiatives and online events)