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WALKING IDEAS
In memory of Peppino Impastato, a free man murdered by the Mafia
Foto: www.peppinoimpastato.com| Leonardo De Micheli (ROMA). When I think of a free man Peppino Impastato comes to my mind. Although he was born in a family tied to the Mafia, he chose to live a life of a free man and he accepted the price to pay for this liberty. It takes courage to stand up against the Cosa Nostra but it takes a whole lot more to stand up against a dominant culture with one rule: the established order must not be changed because it has always been this way and who wants to live peacefully has to obey to it.
But Peppino did not want to give up his ideals, in fact he thought that giving up on what his believes were, in change of a hypocratic tranquility would be “living without living”.
He didn’t want to lock up his brain in a cage, to obey to the right of the strongest even if he had a pump gun. He had a much stronger weapon: his ideas. And ideas you can’t kill because, as Giovanni Falcone [judge killed by a car bomb May 23rd, 1992 n.d.r.] said, “men pass by, but ideas remain, and their moral tensions do remain, and they will continue to walk on the legs of other men”.
| Giuseppe Impastato was born in Cinisi, in the province of Palermo, January 5th, 1948. After his father threw out at home because of his activities against the Mafia, he was engaged in various political and cultural initiatives and denounced the illegality caused by Cosa Nostra. In 1978, while he run for the munipicial elections, he got killed. Nevertheless the electors of Cinisi voted his name and made him member of the Municipal Council. His life is subject the film “The Hundred Steps” by Marco Tullio Giordana.