Campaign For A Living Venice

#VENICEMYFUTURE

PRESS RELEASE

An ABC to relate the problems of Venice to the City, the Region and the State

Will be presented Friday, 20 January  at Ateneo Veneto

The proposals for the city from #Veneziamiofuturo

An ABC which synthesizes, letter by letter, the problems, proposals and points that the opinion movement #Venicemyfuture addresses to the City of Venice and to other city institutions, to the Region and to the State. This is the document that the movement will present Friday, 20 January at 5 PM to the most important governing bodies of the city at Ateneo Veneto, the prestigious institution of Venetian culture.

The points that are analyzed, which correspond to the letters of the alphabet (A to V) are the result of proposals and requests that were gathered, from August to today, in the course of meetings, sestiere by sestiere, with Venetians who live and work in Venice: a sort of “Book of Grievances” that for each problem also contains a solution. It is not only, therefore, a series of complaints, but real suggestions that the Venetian citizens offer to the city institutions, to the Region and to the State as a starting point for a renewed interest in Venice: to affirm that the city has a future, and that the Venetians want to be leaders of this future.

We begin, to cite a few points, with housing (alloggi), which is ever less available to Venetians and which rather goes to be used as tourist locations, then we pass to bricole, the wooden poles which indicate the paths in the Lagoon, that have not been maintained in years and represent a danger for navigation. Then we pass to dignity, understood as the recognition and facilitation of the right of each person who lives in Venice to conduct and existence both dignified and decorous. And on it goes, the alphabet touches on nautical education, flow of tourists, management of public property, hotels, night lighting in the city, jobs, museums, stores, the hospital, boat moorings, air quality, refuse collection, schools, water traffic, and the depopulation of the city, which represents a last stand for Venice, an open life and cultural initiatives in general.

For each letter there is a suggestion given to the City, Region or Station, the results of the meetings held in the sestieri, which were attended by many citizens, who have continued to give their suggestions and proposals via the group’s Facebook page and in social media in general.

“With this document – said #Veneziamiofuturo spokesman Marco Gasparinetti – we want to give, without any political label, the contribution of the citizens of Venice to the institutions who represent us. We wish to have before us a real and dignified future, to continue to live in our city, which is now being massacred by the problems which we have described, letter by letter. Ours are concrete proposals, achievable and realistic; but most of all they represent the urgency, the things that have to be done first, because Venice feels under assault and the situation admits no further delay.

One letter is missing, Z: we left it deliberately empty, to be discovered. In fact it represents the unknown, something which the citizens surely know the value of, based on the responses received from the City, the Region and the State. In fact the time for waiting is over: Venice needs a future, and certain responses from those who represent us.”

Venice, January 18, 2017

Marco Gasparinetti