150 Youths for the 150 Years of Italy's History

Over 150 people attended, almost the same as the number of years of Italian unification. Most of the participants were young people and students, like the Mazzinis or Mamelis who, at a young age, imaged Italy at its birth. Or like the 400 members of the 1,089 soldiers from universities in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany who left Quarto with Garibaldi. 150 participated in yesterday's event, which was held at Bocconi and which was dedicated to students. Giuliano Amato and Paolo Peluffo, authors of Alfabeto Italiano: Fatti e persone di una storia al presente, would like to understand how young people under the age of 25 see our past. It was not only aimed at young people, but it was also organized by students, as an initiative of students representatives and with the collaboration of Radio Bocconi, BStudentsTV and Tra i leoni, the three media channels that make up the Student Media Center.
Attempting to understand the role of young people in today's history compared to that of the last 150 years materialized in various ways: in a long editorial dedicated to the 150^th anniversary in Tra i leoni and distributed during the event, un video made by BStudentsTV, Giuliano Amato giving interviews to all three organizations (which will be distributed shortly) and, lastly, the various questions that the audience asked the two authors of the book. Antonio Aloisi, a student representative on the University Board, also spoke at the event. He encouraged himself and his generation to open up to the future and the next 150 years: "When the boat has stopped on calm waters," he said, "the person with the strongest lungs has to blow, which is us young people." And he quoted the Norwegian Prime Minister not long after the Utoya shooting and President Napolitano, who both invited young people to dedicate themselves to their country, get involved and take a vow supporting democracy. He said, "A non-violent, placid and intelligent change when decisions need to be made is necessary."
Alfabeto Italiano, with its 70 terms and its way of telling the story through little-known episodes, "like Manzoni's stutter or his aversion to writing, or the depression that struck Abba," explained Giuliano Amato, discusses the young people who made Italy. "Mameli was 19 years old when he wrote the national anthem and 25 when he died; Mazzini was 25 years old and Menotti under 30; Garibaldi was 33 when he became the hero of the two worlds and Cavour was the age that Enrico Letta is today. There was a great summons of youth to create Italy," said the author, "because older generations were not capable of doing so, slaves to habit and obligations." Today there is no longer a need for young people to make the heroic sacrifices and a defiance for death like during Italian unification: "Italian youth that are needed today," said Amato, "is what Emilio Gentile describes as understanding that the myth of the nation can survive only if there are common institutions where needs can be identified and met." Returning to the reasons that led him to write the book, Peluffo added, "There is an incredible amount of information scattered around Italy that is being lost. Not only that, but history is written badly about famous people, but even more so when describing less important people." Then, in light of our history, were Italians created when the country was unified? asked the students in the audience. This is a hot topic, but one which Amato has a unique opinion, remembering the many dominations and cultural mixtures that have characterized Italians: "We have never made "ethnicity" an issue when discussing Italianness. Italian people have accepted being children of all these cultures and all of them are Italians. If we want an Italy for Italians, then these Italians are all of us; if we don't want that, we have to turn into Phoenicians or Celts. And there are some people," he joked, "that look for Celtic roots on the Po River." As to what young people should do to work for a different future, he added, "We need to find the "us" again that has been scattered into a multitude of "I"s. It needs to be an "us" that has moral worth and not just corporate value. You students are suited to do this because you have a strong feeling of generational solidarity." The students in the audience said that Italians are often ashamed of being Italian when they go abroad. "I don't think it's a real uneasiness," explains Peluffo. "It's more of an uneasiness of identity, the frustration of not seeing their identity experienced. No one expected such a great success for the celebration of the 150^th anniversary, but involvement has been very wide. Actually, today there is more dissatisfaction for collective action." "Today," concluded Amato, "to go behind a party that wants Italy to be divided, we were behind something that doesn't know what it is. And, at the same time, following this federalism, we're moving towards a strong centralism."