Read the original statement in Italian.

Following the call of Non Una Di Meno, Servizio Civile Internazionale (SCI’s Italian branch) and La Città dell’Utopia join the feminist and transfeminist tide that connects the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

As Servizio Civile Internazionale, we are deeply convinced that relationships are built through daily practices that take into consideration the plurality of identities, dimensions and way of social interaction of individuals, part of complex, fluid and evolving universes. Furthermore, for Servizio Civile Internazionale to be nonviolent today means to fight against gender-based violence in all its expressions in daily action. As Aldo Capitini wrote in Le Tecniche della nonviolenza (The Techniques of Nonviolence) :

[…] where there have been nonviolent struggles, there have been civil progress, even when not in majority, and because the problem, it was soon understood, is not so much to win as to follow one’s own persuasions to the end, to make a decisive choice between the possible paths of revolt, to take action because it is right to do so according to what our conscience tells us […], and to refuse to separate the ends from the means that are put in place to achieve them.

As an association that promotes peace and nonviolence, we join the collective cry of “the highest and fierce of those who have no voice” against patriarchy, against fascist, racist and gender-based violence.

At a local level, through the open space of La Città Utopia, a social laboratory located in San Paolo in Rome, we experience a place of popular education for active citizenship, a physical space on the territory where everyone can be involved in doing things starting from low, that is from our local dimension, from our neighbourhoods and cities, local and international places. Within the international network established in 1920, we use the tool of volunteering in our local and international activities, we use non-formal education to create safe and accessible places and experiences for everyone.

We respond to patriarchal and transphobic violence with collective care, structurally transforming the present system in favour of the inclusiveness of all. Knowing the self and the other through mutual recognition that values diversity, inclusion, sharing and self-determination. By challenging and opposing machismo and its violence, we join the fight against that culture that legitimises violence against women and gender-based violence, also, by actively participating in building the communities we want.

Through collective care, the other face of peace, we will be a tide together.

Statement by SCI Italy