The second sensational happening which shook the village didn’t happen there, but in the city of Monza, about fifteen miles away in the year 1900. A certain Gaetano Bresci, the anarchist, killed the King of Italy. Why? Because the King had given a medal of honor to a general who, two years earlier, had given an order to his troops to shoot at a crowd of working people demonstrating in the street of Milan against the high cost of living, killing a number of them. Naturally the servile press painted the anarchist as a monster for killing the ‘good’ King. And the ignorant people of the village, who could hardly read and couldn’t even afford to buy the one-nickel newspaper, agreed with what the press and the government were saying. - But to me, a six year old boy, the single worker alone in the middle of an enormous crowd of idiots acclaiming royalty, that man who had the courage to kill a King who was protected by so many policemen, soldiers, and carabinieri, well, that Gaetano Bresci, who had even come from America, that fantastic country beyond the ocean, seemed, in my child’s imagination not a monster, but a great hero! Yes, a hero even greater than those famous brigands of Calabria, at the time highly admired and acclaimed in popular stories and songs for the heroic adventures in escaping from the pursuit of the hated police forces of the government, the government never being loved by the people in Italy, because it is the oppressor of the people. Which in my case raises the question: are we born rebels or… sheep?
Enrico Arrigoni, Freedom: My Dream
