The Casalesi citizens are the inhabitants of Casal Di Principe, a town in the province of Caserta, near Naples in the Campania region.
A common mistake in the international perception of the world is to associate the word “mafia” with the word “Italy”, as is done with pizza and mozzarella. By association of ideas we tend to think that a person born in Corleone, or Casal di Principe, is a mafia person by birth. But no one is born a “mafioso”, anywhere in the world. Being a criminal is an individual choice, like living a life according to law and justice. The citizens of Casal di Principe, the citizens of Corleone, are not mafia members. For years they have suffered the shame of this appellation due to some, haggard fellow villagers who, with their criminal actions, have tainted the reputation of an entire community.
Now the time has come to overturn this paradigm: Casalese does not mean mafioso, Corleonese does not mean mafioso, Italian does not mean mafioso. It is not a joke, it is not funny, on the contrary it offends the hope and dignity of the many, many, honest citizens who live in those lands
Together with the ESC volunteers of Apice – Agenzia di Promozione Integrata per i cittadini in Europa who live in our hostel Il Paguro in the past months, we have organized a serie of training meetings on the subject of legality. At the end of these meetings we decided to create a social campaign to present the knowledge we gain. So we made the campaign both in English and in Turkish, to spread our message to all the people around the world.
