Thirty years after the massacre in Via dei Georgofili, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Italy association organizes in Florence the “path of legality”, a dialogue on the fight against the mafia carried out from different perspectives to bring the new generations closer to the legality. Thursday, May 25, at 5:00 p.m., from the Florence office of the organization dedicated to the former US Justice Minister whose daughter kerry kennedy the former national anti-mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso, the Dia official Edoardo Marzocchi, author of the book The mafia explained to my daughter and the journalist from TV2000 Gabriele Santoro, author of the book The discovery of the Cosa Nostra, which reconstructs the creation of the first American anti-mafia group, wanted by Robert Kennedy. “Everybody thinks of him because of his work in favor of civil rights and to combat violence against African-Americans,” he explains to Corriere della Sera his daughter Kerry Kennedy, “but one of his battles was against organized crime, which had infiltrated the business world and government of our country at all levels. He knew that if we didn’t stop them, they would destroy us.
What role did your father play in the fight against the mafia?
“In his first year as Minister of Justice, organized crime investigations increased by 300% over the previous year and convictions by 350%. For the first time, he was able to coordinate the efforts of the FBI, the Secret Service, tax authorities and 23 other federal agencies to gather information on the top 1,000 criminals and members of organized crime in the country. At the time, there were only 17 federal prosecutors in the Department of Justice assigned to this fight, and he immediately increased them to 60. He got eight anti-fraud bills passed in Congress and led the FBI to open 852 new cases. The agency at the time was headed by J. Edgar Hoover, who even denied that there was an organized crime problem and wanted to spend all resources fighting communism. I am proud that his work has inspired people like judges Falcone and Borsellino, who are Italian heroes ».
Among the theories about the death of his father and his uncle, there is one that wants the mafia to kill them.
I always wanted to think about their lives, not their deaths. I don’t think about it and I don’t want to put any energy into it. My father was the first attorney general who understood how much organized crime affected the lives of all Americans, what an extraordinary threat it posed to institutions and democracy.”
For example?
“He was one of the best of the last century. When he entered the White House, he had to face unprecedented crises: economic, environmental, social justice, and the pandemic. And he did it: in the United States there has never been as much employment as now, the economy has reactivated, the pandemic has been overcome although it has not ended, he got the approval of the most important infrastructure law in the Nation, the Highway Law of 1956 and the reduction of violence by firearms, the most current for thirty years. And then he protected LGBTQI marriages and got the whole world to support Ukraine. I could go on, but let’s just say he’s done an extraordinary job and we’re lucky to have him in the White House.”
