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Danilo Dolci a Poetic Modernizer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

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Extract

An idealistic reformer in western Sicily, Danilo Dold, has for two decades employed demonstrations, court cases, petitions, fasts and clandestine radio in an imaginative series of nonviolent tactics aimed at feeding and housing the poor. He has also been key to the building of a dam, the opening of a medical clinic and the creation of a new school for Sicilian youth. He has effectively challenged the violence, poverty and fatalism that have ruled western Sicily for three centuries, and has won the reputation of being "the Gandhi of Sicily." Dolci preaches and practices nonviolence in an area that, until most recently, has been the heartland of the Sicilian Mafia. It is a territory that typifies the brutal realities and awesome problems of the entire Italian South, the Mezzogiorno. Dolci dares to envision a new Sicily, a Sicily which by its democracy and economic development would be the envy not only of the underdeveloped world but of many in Western Europe and America.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1973

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