CLAUDIO MENNA
CLAUDIO MENNA
CLAUDIO MENNA
"LOBOS"
In the last years beheading of several criminal families related to Camorra System brought kids – as sons or grandchildren – taking power to control their business. Hungry to show their value and potential they created small and big group of "soldiers" known by media as "Baby gangs". With no rules and no mercy they always move in packs, often they rob and attack with the only sadistic taste to do it. In the last years in Naples there have been dozens of attacks against teenagers with a ferociy and brutality too similar to that of Roberto Saviano’s TV show “Gomorra”. First of them were sons - or related - to criminal leaders detained for life sentences or decades in prison; in a short while their attitude made a strange trend where kids and teens from difficult areas of the city turned themselves in baby gangsters following those behaviors of violence and anger, although they did not belong to criminal traditions.
On september 2015 during a "stesa" - a criminal attack made by young members of baby gangs which shoot with automatic weapons on air, forcing people to throw spread on ground (litterally "stesi al suolo") the young Gennaro Cesarano - a 16 yo teen from Rione Sanità - was accidentally killed. His death brought between the youngest of neighborhood, his closed friends, a wave of haterd difficult to be curbed. Associations, Ngo's and volunteers started an hard work to avoid a new kind of war, different from those made by Camorra leaders in '80s. A war without any kind of rules, and ethical limits.
Rione Sanità is a popular and historical district of Naples located inside the city belly, known by most for the every day news about criminal organizations, drugs dealing, murders and baby gangs, as almost every popular districts in Naples. Despite its recent emancipation where cultural aggregation points and associations are working hard to take away kids from streets and from a marked path, it’s always an unresolved issue. Total absence of government’s authorities creates for decades inside “Rione Sanità” a parallel world where survival entrusted to common sense often trampled by crime and their way to promise easy money for all neighborhood’s kids, for them indispensable as dealers or sentinels.
After the tv show “Gomorra”, crime and criminals have been projected in common imaginary as “Guest Stars”, stereotypes and model to follow for all those kids without any family support.
"Lobos" is a report started several years ago about last generation of kids and teens born after 2000's inside Rione Sanità, my mother's neighborhood; the main actors of this story are all connected directly or indirectly to what happened few years ago to Gennaro Cesarano, a 16yo teen accidentally mourdered during a criminal attack made by teens of a rival district.
"Lobos" is an anthropological report about the main cause which lead youngest who live in a popular neighborhood as Rione Sanità to take criminal paths. I tried to investigate - diving myself in this reality - how the absence of Government and Municipality affect their lives, made mostly, by family issues, school dropout, bad habits, traditions, religion and paganism, fake myths, smoke sellers and dealers of illusions. (Photo and text © Claudio Menna)
From Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino:
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
CLAUDIO MENNA
"Italian Manifesto"
Text ENG/ITA
On March 4th 2018 we returned to the polls after some "technical governments” and several years of electoral immobilism.
The political landscape compared to last elections has changed, the extreme wings of the right and left have assumed a different role, proposals alternatives to those of the parties of "majority", preemption to the Italians for any socio-economic right Cultural-on the one hand-and associations, activism and welcoming policies on the other.
There is a nostalgic return to the old slogans of the past, symbols and ideals: fascists and Communists of the new millennium collide on all fronts with the supervision for the first of law enforcement and institutional bodies.
The people are more confused than ever and according to the last surveys, about 15 million of Italians will prefer to refrain from the vote of March 4. They are the one who is aiming to try the desperate feat of reaching the majority in Parliament and the beginning of a new legislature.
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#1 Manifesto
ITA
Il 4 Marzo 2018 si ritorna alle urne dopo alcuni governi "tecnici" e diversi anni di immobilismo elettorale.
Il panorama politico rispetto alle ultime elezioni è mutato, le frange estreme della destra e della sinistra hanno assunto un ruolo differente, proposte alternative a quelle dei partiti di "maggioranza", prelazione agli Italiani per qualsiasi diritto socio economico culturale - da un lato - ed associazionismo, attivismo e politiche d'accoglienza dall'altro.
Si sta assistendo ad un ritorno nostalgico per i vecchi slogan di un tempo, simboli ed ideali: fascisti e comunisti del nuovo millennio si scontrano su tutti i fronti con la supervisione da parte dei primi, delle forze dell'ordine e degli organi Istituzionali.
Il popolo è piu' confuso di sempre e stando agli ultimi sondaggi, circa 15 milioni di Italiani preferiranno astenersi dal voto del 4 marzo.
Sono loro a cui si punta per tentare la disperata impresa di raggiungere la maggioranza in Parlamento e l'inizio di una nuova legislatura.
#2 Italians
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© CLAUDIO MENNA, 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED