Roma

When many people say 'Roma' the first thing that comes to mind is the beautiful city of Rome, Italy. However, today our group learned a new definition to the work 'Roma.' Isabella Clough Marinaro, author of "Integration or Marginalization? The Failures of Social Policy for the Roma in Rome," came to enlighten our group about the European Union's largest ethic minority (10- 12 million). A people whose history has largely been ignored, "For more than one thousand years, the Roma have been an integral part of European civilization," (EU 2010). Isabella spoke to our group in detail about the role the Roma play throughout the world but, more specifically, the role they play in the city of Rome. Isabella shared with our group that the Italian government recently declared a 'Nomad Emergency' throughout many regions of Italy. The declaration of this national emergency means that the government is going to aim to confine the Roma into fewer and fewer areas of Rome in order to make them much less visible throughout the city center. In order to do this, the Italian government has developed prison-like camps in which they can contain the Roma.

For me, the implementation of housing for the Roma parallels the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago.When the building of Cabrini Green began in 1942 by the Chicago Housing Authority, they were intended to represent the future of public housing in America. Unfortunately, in a short period of time, Cabrini Green was represented nothing but a gangland where the elevator shafts of the twenty-five foot tall buildings housing upwards 15,000 people  served as entrapments for drug deals. Ironically, by the early 1990s, the Cabrini Green buildings became the symbol of all that is wrong with the public housing in America.

After listening to Isabella's presentation today,  I saw many parallels with Cabrini Green and the proposed projects for the Roma. While the Italian government may think they can contain the Roma, I think their housing projects will solely result in violence and become symbols of the government's efforts to force humans into inhumane prison-like cells where they are unable to gain resources and climb the social ladder. Isabella's presentation was both inspiring and enlightening and I am looking forward to seeing how the Roma respond to the new projects they are being forced into.

Earlier this afternoon, we had our second Italian class with insegnante Aurora. During this class we practiced our pronunciations and learned some basic Italian words such as libro (book), penna (pen), chiave (key), macchina (car), and my personal favorite- cioccolate (chocolate). Tomorrow we will have our first check-in with Stephanie and then the majority of us will head to Firenzia (Florence) where we will continue to put our Italian to good use!