Not in My Back Yard

On the frontpage of Carta, March 14, 2008, there was the following passage.

Perhaps the worst way to deal with obstacles posed by territorial movements that have emerged in Italy in recent years is to reduce them to numbers. The Sole24Ore, the newspaper of Confindustria, the Italian association of industrial managers, reported the results of a study on alleged cases of "Nimby syndrome", the tag the media put on the movement of citizens who contest 'apparently-public serving works'. According to the report, there are 193 works in Italy "blocked" by the protests of local people. And it's obvious that for the newspaper of Confindustria, this is unacceptable. Power stations, incinerators, landfills and regasification terminals are the most controversial projects. Numbers are misleading in many ways: they say nothing of the quality of the projects, or the reasons for the criticism, or the history of the territories and movements. Everything is summed up in one figure, which is to filter and interpret "economically". And instead often behind each 'no' there is a 'yes' to different models of energy, more sensible waste management or other forms of mobility, that the current policy and narration of the country given by the media and relegated, when we are lucky, in the notes of colour dedicated to "movements", are difficult to interpret and impossible to legitimise. As if the 'syndrome' speeches lead to uneven, ecologists delusions or illusions of energetic democracy.

To paraphrase the argument, reducing to numbers and slogans the countless movements, violent or less violent, that contest the established powers means ignoring the reasons behind the protests in favour of ethical or political opinions, rushed and incomplete. So those are terrorists, those other murders, here they do not know the history, there they do not respect geography, and nobody will care why people take a weapon and kill other people.

I remember a sentence that I have heard three times in my life, each time with slightly different words but not too different in meaning: "Those people are ignorant, peasants beating their wives and mistreating their children."
The first time was a Russian boy, speaking of Chechen independentists.
The second time was a Turkish girl, speaking of Kurdish nationalists.
The third time was an Indian boy, speaking of Kashmiri separatists.

I suppose that there is wrong done only when it comes to bombs and tanks, but I understand that, almost always, whoever shoots against the established power says "Nimby": Not In My Back Yard! If the established powers would hear the words perhaps no one would need to shoot ...

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)