A year is always a year, but when you’re almost 79 and you’ve been locked up in a maximum security prison for 47 and a half years, time hangs really heavy.
26th of June was the 48th anniversary of the famous “Oglala Incident” (which also gives the title to a two-hour documentary that Robert Redford produced several years ago), when two FBI agents and a Native American died in a very violent shoot-out on June 26, 1975. When Aldo Moro and Francisco Franco were still alive.
In recent days in different parts of the world, there have been demonstrations for Leonard Peltier: small resistance groups who have spread the word all over the world to remember that date and to ask with all their strength for the release of a man who can no longer take it. He must get out and spend his last days in freedom.
In Italy, thanks to the tireless effort of the “Research Centre for Peace, Human Rights and the Defence of the Biosphere” there has been a whole week of meetings in Viterbo. In Rome, a letter was delivered to the Mayor, reminding Peltier as an honorary citizen of the capital city who must be released.
Sibilla Drisaldi, translator of Leonard Peltier’s autobiography ‘My Dance of the Sun’, with Paola Angelucci, Councillor of Rome’s Municipality 9
In the north, between Milan and the Val Susa there were rallies, and the outstanding documentary of Andrea Galafassi (still a work in progress) was shown on three occasions. It perfectly documents the last year’s visit of the Native American delegation and reconstructs that period through today’s words and yesterday’s images. The No Tav place of San Didero, in Val Susa, named after Peltier last year, has renewed the closeness and similarities between these two exemplary fights. The heat didn’t stop anyone.
Meeting at San Didero, Val Susa
Meeting at Baia del Re, Milan
Meeting at the Italian Anarchist Federation
On September 12, Leonard will enter his eighties. The energy of solidarity around the world will make him feel less lonely and will put pressure on President Biden to sign this blessed release, without waiting for the end of his prison sentence, before it gets too late.
Photos by Alessandro Dama, Pujia Veronica, Celmira Yelmioro e Andrea De Lotto
Video of the rally in Milan
1) The NO TAV movement is a powerful resistance movement in Northern Italy against the construction of a useless high-speed train line that would destroy the natural environment