Friday 10 October 2008

Sorry, did she say something?

An anti-racism campaigner even I would get behind...

As Italy struggles to contain a "rising tide of xenophobia and racism", the largest and most despised minority in the country has acquired a glamorous standard-bearer. Like 1.2 million other residents of Italy, Ramona Badescu is an immigrant from Romania. The willowy actress and singer from Bucharest moved to Italy after the fall of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 and is the closest thing Italy possesses to a Romanian household name.

Now Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has made her his counsellor for the Romanian community's integration. "I hope to become a bridge between the Romanians and the mayor," she said. "Romanians here have many problems connected to work: more Romanians die at work sites than any other nationality." Her first policy idea is to set up a free phone service in both languages to help Romanian migrants find information, residence permits and other practical information.

You know what? Under normal circumstances I may have taken Ms. Badescu to task for daring to suggest that there is SERIOUSLY a problem of racism in Italy, without proof. But then, this is no normal anti-racism campaigner, as the picture shows. Ahem.

I'd gladly debate with her any day.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

when will you go online?

Anonymous said...

well its nice to know that you have great hits here.

Anonymous said...

very clever.

Anonymous said...

haha.

Anonymous said...

its good to know about it? where did you get that information?

Anonymous said...

help me.

Anonymous said...

what happened to the other one?