Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [10]
At the beginning of the meeting an elderly resident had wanted him to talk about the district market and its failure to generate any business. The politician would have none of this; he had not come to discuss the market, said he, and the market was not generating any business-only three merchants had responded to the city government's initiative with bids. "Now I think they should hold a fourth competition. Well then! But-no one participates. No one participates. On the other hand, it's even understandable that no one participates, because in reality"-and here he made an open-andclosing gesture with the fingers of his left hand and then an up-and-down gesture with the fingers closed together, to show that there was no money to be made in the district market. In any case, he added rather dismissively, the old man was probably seeing things "with the mindset of thirty years ago." Then, waving the index finger of his left hand in the vague direction of the surrounding buildings, he declared, "Today the type of population that lives hereabouts has changed."
The mostly younger women and men gathered around him seemed disposed to agree. The old man again insisted; the politician, visibly irritated, began to respond more brusquely, reiterating that the city authorities had invited bids for stalls on three occasions, all to no avail.
When the old man persisted yet again, the councilor's speech-after an ironic "have patience! "-became slightly agitated. Turning to his sympathetic younger hearers with a pained grin that invited complicity, he pointed out that the failure of the local market "is not my fault, sure, but it's not my job either, right?"
His audience, although not directly interested in the old man's plaint, had still seemed willing to contemplate alternative strategies for utilizing the market space and thus also for regenerating local business-concerns that also animated their interest in dealing with traffic flow, to which they were then happy to return, allowing the politician to expatiate on all the hard work he had done to improve their lives.
The larger economic and demographic processes at work, however, were hurting some residents more directly, over their right to remain in their homes. Here, the frequent public meetings would ultimately prove to be of little avail. A protest meeting on evictions was held in the main square of the district, the Piazzetta Tittle square, actually the main social gathering place of the rione), with a table laid out for people to register their concerns. More formal meetings could be conducted in the halls of a university facility located conveniently next to the parish church, especially when action involving more than one district was involved. But the plague of evictions would not be stayed by mere talk.
A few newcomers and some of the more educated residents of long standing also took part in various public gatherings, both within the district and elsewhere. Political party offices were one important type of venue. Local intellectuals could visit the offices of a free-thinkers' association named for Giordano Bruno, the four hundredth anniversary of whose death was celebrated before his statue on the other side of the historic center, in the Campo de' Fiori, where he was burned at the stake as a heretic; here activists had set up a "pope-free zone"; and here we encountered most of our left-wing friends from Monti, some fresh from a party political meeting in the nearby offices of the Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats) just off the square. Public protests against the government were also common, although not usually organized only at the district level. We would hear them coming down Via Cavour long before they were visible, with their band music, flags (mostly with the red of the various Communist groups), and sporadic chants and songs,