After years spent lending their arms to enrich landlords of all kinds, migrant labourers became informed, organised, and realised that much of the land around them was uncultivated and abandoned, rendered unproductive by speculative logics indifferent to the possibility that land workers could take on a role other than that of arms to be exploited.
We are not arms we are men, this is the slogan often shouted by migrant labourers.
Today these men wanted to launch a new challenge, not only to the bosses who exploit them, not only to the institutions that oppose them. A challenge also to all their brothers, TO GET OUT OF THE EXPLOITATION, TO BE PROTAGONISTS, TO CULTIVATE THE LAND FOR THEMSELVES NOT FOR THE PROFIT OF ANYONE ELSE. They decided to occupy two hectares of land, they decided to work it and sow it, they decided to harvest tomatoes, they decided to feel free.
A signal of hope not only to migrant labourers, but also to all those who want to give a signal of change, of reaction to the passivity rampant in the world of work. This signal must be picked up not only in Torretta Antonacci, it must be a signal that involves migrant workers and Italian workers in all the different regions of Italy.
Three million hectares of uncultivated and abandoned land in Italy, public land left abandoned with unpresentable reclamation and fostering interventions, it is time for uncultivated land to go into the hands of those who want to work it, under public control and cooperative management.
Let’s give strength to this idea, to this project, let’s invite all those who can lend a hand to the experience of the Torretta Antonacci labourers, to contact us, to reserve the bottles of tomato puree that will be produced in the coming weeks, to make available their knowledge and experience to bring this idea to life in other places.
