Danilo Dolci festival celebrates 100 years of “prophet of non-violence”

Last Updated: June 17, 2024

A hundred years after his birth, the figure of Danilo Dolci, the non-violence activist who was a protagonist in western Sicily’s memorable social struggles, will be remembered between Palermo and Trappeto. Some associations that refer to his experience have organized the “Palpitare di nessi” festival. Various events, from June 24 to 30, will retrace the history and main themes of Dolci who, after promoting hunger strikes and peasant struggles in the Partinico area, created in 1968 the “Borgo di Trappeto” conceived as a center for training courses, seminars, round tables, and shows. Many initiatives of the Trieste sociologist, who arrived in Sicily in 1952 and died on December 30, 1997, had a strong political resonance such as denunciations of delays in the reconstruction of Belice after the 1968 earthquake, widespread poverty conditions, collusions between mafia and politics, and the right to work. In 1956, Dolci was arrested with 26 other people, including laborers and unionists participating in the “reverse strike” in the Trazzera vecchia, a neglected rural road that farmers used to go to work. To the police commissioner sent to quell the protest, Dolci said that work is not only a right but a duty protected by Article 4 of the Constitution. Dolci, defended by Piero Calamandrei, was then sentenced to a month and 20 days for illegal conduct of work on public land. In 1970, the police intervened to shut down an improvised broadcaster, the “Radio of the poor souls,” from which the sociologist broadcast his messages for the development of an abandoned territory. The central moment of the centenary of the apostle of non-violence, as he was called, will take place on June 26 at Palazzo Steri with a conference on the themes dear to Dolci, attended by intellectuals and university professors. From the 27th, the Borgo di Trappeto will host the other events of the program: shows, concerts, and theatrical performances.