Event overview
The Department of Theatre and Performance invites you to a unique and vital public lecture on the current refugee crisis in the Mediterranean by the Mayor of Palermo, Sicily, Leoluca Orlando.
The event shall be chaired by Prof Anna Furse with the participation of Dr Andrea Cusumano (Goldsmiths) Minister for Culture for the Municipality of Palermo.
Leoluca Orlando Biography:
Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo, is a lawyer and Professor of Regional Public Law at the University of Palermo. He was elected Mayor for the 4th time in 2012 with a 73% majority and since 2014 is the President of the Association of the Municipalities of Sicily.
His remarkable political career is extensive. From 1978 to 1980, he was legal advisor to Piersanti Mattarella, President of the Sicilian Region, until he was killed by the Mafia in 1980. That year he was elected City Councillor for the Christian Democratic Party and in 1985 became Mayor of Palermo. During his 5-year administration, Orlando headed a city government which constituted a severe break with the political practices of the past. In the same period, known as the “Palermo Spring”, he denounced the mafioso economy and promoted substantial growth of the antimafia movement.
In 1990 Orlando ran as candidate for the Christian Democratic Party in local elections and was elected with the largest number of votes (71,000). However, his efforts to renew his party from within met ever-increasing resistance, and in 1991 he left to found the Movement for Democracy “La Rete” (“The Network”). The aim of this new political movement was to bring moral issues back into Italian politics through “transversality” (“multipartisanship”), i.e., the participation of all the positive forces across political parties in the struggle toward the creation of a democratic society. He was elected to the Sicilian Regional Parliament in 1991 and to the Italian National Parliament in 1992.
In 1993, in the first direct Mayoral elections ever held in Italy, he was elected Mayor of Palermo with 75% of the votes. He immediately began reform to banish the economic interests of organized crime from the Municipality. He motivated a new multi- faceted project of civic renewal which, through a range of programs including cultural and educational-based initiatives for the promotion of a new culture of lawfulness, he contributed to free citizens from the cultural hegemony of the Mafia in a process which has become known as “The Palermo Renaissance”.
In 1994 he was elected Deputy to the European Parliament. Among his several committee memberships he worked for the Mediterranean to play a more important role in the EU, and for the adoption of a EU project against organized crime which was inspired by newly adopted Italian antimafia legislation as well as by the Sicilian experience.
In November 1997, Orlando was again elected Mayor of Palermo. In December 2000 he resigned from office in order to run for the regional elections of June 2001, and was elected member of the Sicilian Parliament. In April 2006 he was elected deputy of the National Parliament. In May 2008 he was re-elected deputy of the Italian Parliament and in June 2009 he was elected to the European Parliament.
Orlando, currently campaigning for Migration as a Human Rights issue within the EU, has won many awards, commissions and distinctions for his political work and is author of several books including:
• Palermo, Mondadori, Milano, 1990.
• Fede e Politica (Faith and Politics), Marietti, Genova, 1992.
• Fighting the Mafia and Renewing Sicilian Culture, Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2001.
• Ich sollte der nächste sein, Herder Verlag, Freiburg, 2002.
• Hacia una cultura de la legalidad–La experiencia siciliana, Pontificia Università Catolica del Perù, 2003.
• Der sizilianische Karren, Ammann Verlag, Zürich, 2004.
• The Arabic edition of the book “Fighting the Mafia and renewing Sicilian culture” edited by The Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace – Beirut, December 2004.
• Hacia una cultura de la legalidad–La experiencia siciliana, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico D.F, March 2005.
• Leoluca Orlando racconta la Mafia, UTET, Torino, 2007.
• Leoluca Orlando erzählt die Mafia, Herder Verlag, september 2008.
• Ich sollte der nächste sein, Herder Verlag, Freiburg, new edition, 2010.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct 2015 | 6:15pm - 9:00pm |
Accessibility
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