In a time when the words “inclusion” and “rights” have become banners for every modern administration, it is necessary to ask the fundamental question: which inclusion deserves priority today in a civil and orderly community? Catanzaro, the historical and cultural capital of Calabria, has recently enthusiastically embraced symbolic initiatives aimed at giving visibility to demands linked to the LGBT world, adopting a language that refers to the so-called “gender politics.” However, it is precisely in this zeal for inclusive appearance that the cardinal principle of every good administration risks being lost: the care for the common good, concrete and essential.
In these weeks of summer heat, which in Catanzaro manifests itself in all its intensity, thousands of citizens find themselves dealing with an unacceptable reality: the lack of water. Breakages in the aqueduct—or so it is said—have made the supply of that primary good unstable and sometimes nonexistent, without which there is no inclusion, dignity, or equality. It is worth remembering: water is life. It is the human right par excellence. It is the very symbol of blessing in our cultural and Christian tradition.
As Giorgio La Pira, mayor of Florence and exemplary figure of integral political thought, warned, "there is no just city that forgets the poor and their concrete needs." True inclusion starts from fundamental needs, from the right to health, to the dignity of daily life, to respect for the elderly who cannot wash, for the mother who cannot cook, for the worker who comes home and finds no relief. Water is a good that precedes any other political, symbolic, or ideological agenda. And its lack is a humiliation that falls especially on the most vulnerable segments of the population.
Chesterton warned that "the task of civilization is not to abolish differences, but to respect them, building a common home." But how can we talk about a common home when, in the homes, water is missing? When citizens have to organize themselves with tanks and water trucks, living in conditions closer to precariousness than to civilization?
The rhetoric of inclusion, when separated from a sense of reality, risks becoming a caricature of itself, a smokescreen that diverts attention from the elementary duties of an administration. Days, flags, rainbow messages are promoted, but it is forgotten that true equality is realized first and foremost in equal access to essential goods. It is no coincidence that the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church reminds us that “water, a fundamental element for life, must be considered a public good to be guaranteed to all.”
The value of sensitivity towards every person is not denied. But political responsibility, especially at the local level, cannot give in to the temptation of image at the expense of substance. Inclusion cannot be selective, nor ideological. It must start from the foundations, and the foundations are water, bread, work, services.
Catanzaro has the right to be a modern city, but not at the expense of its weakest citizens. It has the right to be an open city, but not a distracted one. It has the duty to be a just city, starting from the well, not from the poster.
Because every rainbow, if it is to make sense, first needs rain. And every peaceful and orderly coexistence needs, above all, the water that unites and quenches. Everyone.
By Claudio Maria Ciacci