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Farewell to Lydia menapace, who died at the age of 96 after being hospitalized for COVID-19 in the department of infectious diseases of the hospital of Bolzano. Italy loses one of their own today partisan fighters. A voice comes out always free, a point of reference to fight for women, for the rights of all, for peace. “Fight” and categorically never “war”, a word that avoided in all its implications. Today we are left with a lover of politics made of actions (and gestures) and never of shouted words. Until the last thirst for participation, because it is in comparison that ideas are born. He said: “The fight is still long” because “what we have achieved is still recent and difficult to endure.” And also for this reason, his absence will be even more painful as the country tries to imagine a future outside of the pandemic. Here, perhaps, most of Italy will lack the imagination of Lydia menapace: she who the encyclopedia of women of Monica lanfranco me Rosangela Pesenti define “The anticipator“And that has always been at the forefront when imagining the new. Because it was in his interventions, 60 years ago like today, that suddenly other paths, other worlds, other solutions became possible.
Lidia Briscola (Menapace is the husband’s last name Baby with whom he shared his life) a Novara in 1924 and from a very young age he became a partisan relief in the formation of the Ossola Valley. Battle Name: Brunette. Even if I never wanted to touch weapons, he wanted to say. “I am finally ‘discharged’ with the ‘guerrilla’ patent (obviously in the male one) and with the rank of second lieutenant became furiously antimilitarist“, He counted in a contribution published by Women’s Free University. He spoke of his partisan history until April 25 last, in the last interview with Gad Lerner transmitted in Rai3: “I reject the idea that women can only be relay races because the struggle for liberation is a complex struggle.” And “the Piedmont CNL told me that He could have been a guerrilla even without carrying weapons.“. Of us they said that” we were the women, the girls, the whores of the partisans “. But”without the women who sheltered the fleeing Italian army, there would have been no resistance“And also for that, despite the fact that Togliatti asked women not to participate in the Liberation parade in Milan” because people would not understand “, she Lidia Menapace did that show anyway. “I was partisan all my life, because doing it is a life choice“. A clear history that disarmed in its indisputable being. At the time of the referendum on the Constitution, the Renzians tried to make distinctions between the” true supporters “who voted in favor against the others who fought in defense of the Charter. Lidia Menapace, interviewed on Di Martedì, she laughed at it: “You have to go over history a bit.” There wasn’t much more to say.
Lydia menapace He graduated at the age of 21 in 1945 with the highest grade in Italian literature. As the Encyclopedia of Women recalls, on the occasion of a meeting in Genoa in 2011 she said that on the day of her graduation a professor praised her saying that her work was “The result of a truly virile wit”. Of course she didn’t let it pass, but in her response she was called “hysterical.” He has never forgotten that phrase and it was, in his own way, the beginning of many struggles. After the war, Lidia Menapace commits to the Fuci – Federation of Catholic Universities of Italy and in 1964 she was the first woman elected in Bolzano Provincial Council with the Christian Democrats along with Waltraud Deeg. In that same legislature, she became the first woman to enter the provincial council, as an effective counselor for social and health affairs. In 1968, however, he left the Christian Democrats and after professing himself a Marxist, he lost any opportunity to make a career inCatholic University (where he taught). In 1969 he was one of the founders of the first nucleus of “The poster” for which she wrote until the 1980s. In 1973 she was one of the promoters of the Christian movement for socialism. From 2006 to 2008 she was a senator of Communist re-foundation. He should have become president of the defense commission, but loses his seat for his statements against Frecce tricolori: “Only in Italy are they paid for with public funds,” he said in Trieste.. It was enough to go instead Sergio Di Gregorio Dell ‘Italy of securities. His commitment in Parliament ends, but political activity does not stop because of it. In 2011 he entered the Anpi National Committee. In 2013 a signature collection was launched for her to be nominated senator for life. Among the promoters Monica lanfranco who wrote: “It is probably the best testimony of how the country as a whole, and the left in particular, does not know how to exploit its talents.” Senator for Life Lidia Menapace will never be. But his commitment in the front row continues: from the campaign for the no to the Renzi referendum to the candidacy with Power to the people in 2018.
Lidia Menapace was a feminist, in many cases the first to raise questions that would later become crucial. “In formally democratic countries, a gender can no longer be excluded from certain rights. But we must be careful. Better to go into equal fights. Start protesting immediately if girls have less access to education or if women are asked to stay home to take care of the family, “she told ilfattoquotidiano.it in 2013. But in her struggle there was a conscience that came from Far: “My mother coined an ethical code for the two daughters,” he said in 2016 in the documentary “You can not live without a lilac jacket.”Be financially independent and then do what you want. The important thing is that you are independent for the socks. You cannot be independent in your head and not in your feet ”. Economic freedom as an essential starting point for the emancipation of women: even today, feminist struggles start from that simple and so fragile assumption. But not only. It was the first Lydia menapace, always writes the encyclopedia of women, to “emphasize the importance of sexual language as a fundamental tool against sexism“Anticipating, once again, struggles that are more relevant today than ever. In 1993 he wrote in the preface to” Words for Young Women “:” If it is so little, I said, why not do it? It is not done because the name is power, existence, possibility of becoming memorable, worthy of memory, worthy of entering history as women, not as habitability, transmitters of life to others at the cost of obscuring their own ”. The answer for all who still today they insist on not becoming feminine mayor, lawyer and minister.
One of the most beautiful definitions of the Feminist Movement is due to her: she called it “Karst”, like a river that “sinks” and resurfaces in seemingly distant spaces and times. Lydia menapace he believed in the power of encounters, of “speaking in person”, exchanging gestures and expressions. Communicate by looking at the face and understand by going to see. Her tours of Italy, her momentum continues to travel to the end to go where she was invited. Because the imagination to have an exit needs sensations and emotions gathered in the first person. To find his writings, you have to look for traces between articles (Tide, Liberation, Land of women) and books (from “Political Economy of Sexual Difference” to “Resisté, The Finger and the Moon”). But your testimony went beyond the written word and was in the front line whenever he felt it necessary: from not from Molin to the sardines to the struggles for the right of women not to have children (he is among the voices of the precious documentary Lunàdigas). Lydia menapace he believed in politics, but above all he believed in the politics of peace. “Together with others, I have given life to a permanent Convention of Women against wars that has a theoretical structure called Rosa Luxemburg Association, always explained in his speech for the women’s university, “we want to build a political culture that excludes war as a tool to manage conflict. Rosa with her writings and her life provides us with traces of thought and practices of action of great breadth and relevance, also for a revolutionary hypothesis not Leninist-militarist but social and almost stateless. And also a lot of economic analysis tips. Rosa was Jewish, as we know, and when she fled her native Poland, which was under the tsars, to go to Germany, she was preceded by her colleagues from the Polish Socialist Party with a letter to her colleagues from the German Social Democratic Party saying : ‘about you Rosa Luxemburg, don’t let yourself be seduced by that Polish Jewess’: cute, right? ”.
But of the many things Menapace wrote, perhaps especially today, his friend’s words are worth remembering. Alexander Langer, published in the Manifesto in July 1995: “What does Alex Langer want to tell me by his death so“ ostentatiously ”celebrated? I couldn’t bear the waste of his gesture. And then I return to trace some memories of an intense, affectionate, warm, although occasional friendship, often composed only of meetings in train stations to reach meetings, debates ”, is his attack. And he continues with words that, even today, we can cut out and use as a source of inspiration: “Can a bitter political loneliness be endured for a long time in vulgar, foolish, vain and very dangerous moments? Whereas mediocre biographies of mostly bad characters occupy newspaper columns and columns? Rumors and intrigues develop around any matter, is everything gray and boring? And the instrument of political debate becomes the pot that measures the flow of urine? ”. And then close: “The dangers are there and they are real. What is needed, finally, to pierce the mists of our brains, the butter of our consciences? “.
Not ten days ago did we have to say goodbye Ibes Pioli, partisan and also one of the first to fight for women’s rights in Italy. Today we say goodbye to Lydia menapace. And as the head of state recalled Sergio MattarellaAmong the few who speak of the serious loss of the elderly decimated by Covid (“Benchmark for the young”), the absences are becoming more serious.
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