PORDENONE – Second appointment at the Historical Workers’ Society with Andrea Maggi, professor and writer from Pordenone, in recent weeks again on TV in the role of professor of the docu-reality show “Il Collegio”, every Tuesday from around 21.20 on Rai2.
For SOMSI, his collaboration continues in the wake of the project “Words for a new Humanism”, which on Friday 2 December at 20.45 (free admission) will present, at the headquarters of the association in Palazzo Gregoris, a new appointment between literature and civil reflection, with images and music, this time dedicated to “JF Kennedy and human rights”.
As already happened in the previous acclaimed event centered a few weeks ago on the message of “San Francesco e il Cantico di Frate Sole”, in which Maggi’s opening address touched not only on themes of poetry and spirituality, but also on ecology, environmental and human sensitivity compassion for creation, the research work on the figure of the 35th President of the United States killed in Dallas in 1963 will also bring together the themes of the struggle for civil rights, also shared with his brother Robert and with figures such as Martin Luther King, with a broader historical and social reflection.
The racial conflict between the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) communities or the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants – to which not even Kennedy strictly belonged, being of an Irish and Catholic family – and the Afro-American ones has its roots far back in time, from the of American Independence which freed the colonies of the New World from Great Britain, to the slave trade (which between the 16th and 19th centuries deported 12 million black slaves from Africa to the Americas, of which 645,000 in the United States), to events of the Civil War which saw the Northern and Southern States opposed in a bloody clash on this very ground, up to the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and the subsequent history of the twentieth century.
But he also does not forget today, marked by protests against cases of US police violence against African Americans (striking, but not the only one, the story of George Floyd, in 2020), with the Black Lives Matter movement on one side, and the new white supremacists on the other.
A story that must, more than ever, induce us, according to Maggi, never to let our guard down, because if it is true that the courage of the choices of figures such as those of Kennedy and Reverend King, who will be widely discussed during the meeting, have encouraged that “dream” that put an end to racial segregation sanctioned by law in the United States, freedom and rights must never be taken for granted, but rather they must be continually reaffirmed and defended, as an absolute value and “common good”.
In fact, as Primo Levi also recalled in his writings, we are all responsible for the drifts of humanity. So no one can truly consider themselves innocent, because our past teaches what indifference leads to.
The event, realized with the contribution of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and the Municipality of Pordenone and with the support of ITAS Assicurazioni, will also see live musical counterpoint with the Polinote teachers Francesca Ziroldo, voice, and Nicola Milan, piano, on songs from the past and present related to the theme (among others, also songs by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Green Day), and a projection of images curated by Davide Pettarini of CLAPS.
Info and contacts of the Workers’ Society:
tel. 0434 520820 – [email protected]