30.01.2025 / Perspectives
Author: Giuseppe Caruso, M.A. Candidate
Outside that grid lies a free world, where you will choose who to be, what to say, and who to vote for!
Look, observe closely, then let your gaze fall back on that small patch of dark ground, set aside, detached from the vast, luminous expanse of the outside world.
Do you feel the anguish of those who are not free?
The grid knows it well; it is so structured and symmetrical that it perfectly mirrors the rigid shapes of any regime, government, or institution meant to oppress and confine its people.
And yet, you must look even more closely: the material of that oppressive grid is a thin, rusty iron – it is hope. Yes, it is a barrier, but not an indestructible one.
It would only take unity to break, to dismantle injustice, to defeat those who forbid the flourishing of freedom.
That soil is barren because nothing healthy can grow within the barriers of an unjust society. Neither flowers nor fruits.
And yet, destiny is in our hands: we only need to tend to that soil, cultivate it, to rediscover its denied fertility.
We are not the earth; we are the perseverance that allows it to thrive.
We can choose light, water, life.
Our flowers are our concrete actions, our hunger for justice.
It is up to us to decide.
Earth or mud.
And yet, a pipe watches us. It is a source of water.
Drops of strength, a way out – for a path to freedom always exists.
We just have to look carefully.
Departments: FRI Media Lab; Society, Crisis, and Resilience Program; Policy Analysis and Outreach Department; Research Department; Center on Global Affairs and Post Development.
Themes: Cities; Civic Engagement; Civil Society; Communism and Totalitarianism; Democracy and Democratization; European Union; Freedom of Expression; Human Rights; Media and Journalism; Social Inequalities.