EDITORIALE
The widespread provincialism that animates the media in our country is one of the major risks for anybody attempting to carry out a social investigation on the territory. All the more if this territory is reduced to be exclusively a relatively small one, such as the city of Milan. Therefore we would like to strongly state that to us it means working in an opposite direction: we don't want to talk about ourselves and our problems just for the sake of reflecting ourselves in a self-referential publication. On the contrary, we try to talk about the condition that everybody, not only the people from Milan but also from many other parts of the world, lives daily in this city. First of all to try to think a more conscious way about the historical moment we are living.
Milan is definitely facing a long period of decadence. The years when our city could claim to be the political avant-garde of the "movement", the years when people looked for new answers to the urgent social contradictions, are now far away. Today Milan is famous simply because it is the capital of "berlusconism", fashion and pollution. We can say that the condition of Milan is an index of the discouraging cultural and economic situation that the Italians have been living for several decades. The choice of dealing with, in this issue, important and general matters rises from this consciousness, starting from situations that take place only in Milan, which could possibly be the most representative of our present. Not only for the record, but also to fix some points from which a new start is possible, in the hope that something (or somebody) around us awakens.
We'll tell you also about the multi-ethnic realities that rise in the suburbs, ignored by the media and dramatically current; the problem of immigrants and "precarious" people who struggle for rights that the State persists in not recognizing them; those getaways that rise to charge off a dominant unique thought and to give us back breath through a smile or clandestine music.
This fifth issue of miciap is dedicated to you all, citizens of Milan (and thus of the world).
