Letter from the teacher to the children of Pisa: “We tell them that they are always on social networks. Then come the batons”

Lorena Conte, teacher in Pisa, writes an open letter today on Republic to the boys beaten by the police during the pro-Palestinian demonstration. The literature teacher at the Niccolò Pisano Polyvalent Institute in Marina di Pisa begins by saying that “we must apologize to our children. Not only if we are Ministers of the Interior, not only if we are police commissioners or police officers; but by teachers, educators and parents. They are constantly told that they are apathetic, that they are indifferent, that they always keep their heads down on social media. And when someone picks up this head, he is beaten with a baton. And we call him rude and unauthorized.” According to Conte, the adult world has left children alone: ​​”We have failed to protect our students and our children from this strange awakening to true reality. They tried, only a few had the courage and audacity.”

Knights Square

The teacher says she passed through Piazza dei Cavalieri that day: “They stopped me but then I said I was a teacher and they let me pass. Maybe because I'm old and, as my husband says, I'm no longer afraid at checkpoints. And there, the delirium. Riot police, children (many of mine) screaming. It's not very nice, eh, but that doesn't justify the beating.” And he concludes: we must apologize to everyone. To the few people who suffered the beating. To the many who watched from the windows. “We must apologize to those children to whom we always tell to wake up and fight for their ideas. To whom we present Dante, Alfieri, Pasolini as models, telling them to take their courage as an example. And then, once in the rain, they decide to march for rights that are not theirs, we bring them back to reality with the accusations. We must apologize to them, because in this rain, we really lost all the world.”

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