24th May 2019, 5 years ago Andy was killed.
The news reached each of us, in our homes, via phone and television as rock on our tummy. Weeping, silence, rage, urge of shouting the grief and the injustice. Need of doing something, because it is not possible to stay still, but what to do?
“A torchlight? No, it wouldn’t be his style.”
“A demonstration?”
“I want to understand what is going on in Ukraine”.
“Look the Internazionale newspaper, there are his pictures there”
Then weeping and silence again.
There is that project about Senegalese fables, a lot of material gathered and translated to resume for finalizing what was started with him and stopped. Nobody really knows what will come out of it, but many are the friends willing to help with it.
The trial begins, in Pavia, in an extremely small courtroom of the courthouse in Pavia. But at the first hearing, September 14th 2018, the place looked huge, because we were not enough people, just a few.
That night the official news report as they are true, the fake news regarding what happened that day in the courtroom and outside the courthouse.
Rage again. That stone on our stomach is still there, but this time we know very well what we must do for removing it. We must be there, and we must be many. At least as many as Andy’s friends, whoever misses him, whoever appreciates his work, whoever followed the stories he was telling through his pictures, whoever believes that participation is the civic sense and that is a must to provide everybody his own contribution if the world we live in is a place about often complaining.
That by the was is what Andy used to do: being there.
5 years passed from that day and 8 months from the beginning of the trial. And we were 300 people walking towards the courthouse. A small breakfast together in front of his parents house, where Andy grew up, a visit to the cemetery, walking pass what was Andy’s scouting group headquarter and then there we were, queueing for entering in that courtroom, too small for us to fit all.
We were all there for you. Surrounded by the colours of the Jersey painted in your memory by the students of the Volta institute, youngster that you managed to involve and fascinating with the power of your work.
Accompanied by the red poppies colouring the fields around your house and filled with the enthusiasm of whom believed that day, in that courtroom, we should have been all asking aloud Truth in your name.
Next hearings:
June 14th and 21st, July 5th and 12th. This will be the hearing when the verdict will be declared by the court and it will take place in the Annunciata room in Petrarca Square, Pavia