Crusade in Sicily:

...What he wants is a large-scale regional plan of human, social and economic reclamation based on a policy of full employment as guaranteed by Article IV of the new Italian Constitution...

...There is also critical need for adequate local hospital and obstetrical services with pre- and post-natal care for babies and mothers to cut down the shocking infant mortality rate of 9 per cent among the destitute...

...Here, trained specialists work to stimulate local enterprise in every sector of community life, striving to attain the population's collaboration...

...That story is told in the present volume, a sequel and complement to Dolci's earlier Report from Palermo...

...He needs the help of trained specialists: regional planners, community development officers, teachers in adult education, agrarian and extension experts, economists, administrative officers, social workers, hygieniste and nurses...

...In hell, suffering is after all atonement, tempered by memories of a life of pleasure or of fulfillment...

...4.95 Reviewed by Hélène Cantarella Contributor, "Atlantic Monthly" New York "Times Book Review" Danilo Dolci, the Trieste architect who has thrown in his lot with the tragic "outlaws" and the dispossessed of Western Sicily, recently visited the United States where he was described by the press as the "Italian Gandhi.' To anyone acquainted with Dolci and his work, this appellative —however well-intentioned—does not quite apply and contains a certain element of humor...

...Lately they have been joined by an increasing number of well-qualified young Italian volunteers...

...The pressure of publicity has brought about local improvements in Trappeto and Partinico where some dirt roads have been cobbled and the Carboi River Dam has been built...

...Urgent measures must be taken to insure proper sanitation: mosquito and insect control...

...Above all, Dolci calls for higher moral standards in public administration, and a radical change in the attitude of the authorities who treat the people "as if the great majority of them were pathological criminals...

...Dolci is a tall, heavy-set man resembling in no way the emaciated, wiry little Mahatma and he has no such pretensions...

...Besides work for all, there must be a concerted effort to eradicate the illiteracy that is "part and parcel of the region's historical background...

...and records of police corruption and official indifference to the deplorable plight of the local population...

...To this end, Dolci calls for schools that are more effective and efficient than the present ones...

...testimonials in his favor by authors Carlo Levi and Elio Vittorini and spokesmen of liberal Italian opinion...

...Full employment, one of Dolci's immediate goals, must start with gli ultimi (the last), as he calls the very poorest...

...descriptions of the tortures inflicted even on suspects in Palermo's dreaded jails...

...Gandhi was primarily a political thinker whose campaigns were directed in the main against an intrusive foreign power held responsible by the Indians for many of the problems that plagued their land...

...the installation of running water in every house, of public baths and lavatories, of covered drains to replace the open channels that carry waste water and excrement above ground level down to the middle of filth-covered streets...

...reports of "outlaws" telling why they had been driven into "banditry...

...Outlaws is not an organically cohesive work...

...The grim picture almost outdoes in horror the worst torments of Dante's Inferno...

...Serene and earnest, he is also informed, practical and consistent...

...Included are notes from Dolci's diary...

...expertise" is of greater use...

...It is a giant, multifaceted case-history in the rough...

...But much more remains to be done...

...There is no shortage of willing but untrained young people eager to give their services...

...But good will and enthusiasm are not enough...

...For all his idealism, Dolci is no sentimental dreamer...

...Dolci has done just that...

...Dolci's tactics of nonviolence and passive resistance do resemble Gandhi's ideas, but the ultimate aims of Dolci's crusade differ radically from the Indian's goals...

...Dolci, functioning on home ground, is little concerned with parties and governments as such...

...Here, despair is static, unrelieved, stark beyond human imagination, leavened neither by memory of past happiness nor hope of future betterment...

...Dolci's present staff now consists of about 30 experts who have come to him from many parts of Europe, particularly from England, Switzerland and the socalled welfare countries...

...Despite almost insurmountable odds and official obstructionism, Dolci and his handful of assistants have set up five study centers in zones with the highest proportion of unemployment, illiteracy and Mafia activity...

...He does not feel himself to be a hero but just an ordinary man who does his duty as he sees it...

...Unable to cope single-handedly with the problems facing him, too poor to feed the starving children and alleviate the despair of the local population, he organized the now famous hunger strikes, community fasts and the unemployed workers' "strike in reverse" that culminated in his arrest, incarceration and the cause célèbre which focused national and international attention on the sub-human conditions prevailing in Sicily's notorious "Triangle of Hunger...

...Dolci has travelled to England, the Scandinavian countries and now to the United States not only to tell the story of Trappeto-Partinico-Montelepre but also to study new techniques and to learn how to apply them to the colossal problems of Western Sicily...

...These pilot areas cover approximately 740,000 acres of tillable land with a population of some 430,000 persons fand an average murder incidence of one every five days...

...Only in this way will they emerge from the vicious circle of chronic want, disease, ignorance and despair in which they now are trapped...

...How does one tackle century-old problems of starvation, disease, illiteracy, superstition, endemic unemployment and the crimes these evils breed...

...transcripts from his trial...

...Still more are needed to help train the wretched, workhungry inhabitants of this forsaken region to observe, to think and to want to take action in order to curb the forms of violence that mark every phase of their lives...

...When he arrived in Sicily ten years ago to begin his homeric task, Dolci had thirty lire in his pockets...

...A modest beginning to Dolci's program has already been made...

...The Italian historian, Gaetano Salvemini, used to say when things looked hopeless under Fascism: "Si fa quel che si può" (Do what you can...

...This article, largely a dead letter in Western Sicily, stipulates that the Government "recognizes the right of all citizens to work and insures the conditions necessary to render this right effective...

...firstperson stories of fishermen, cowherds, grieving mothers imploring medical aid for dying, rickets-ridden babies...

...He is driven primarily by a desire to end the terrifying misery and poverty that blight Sicily...