“An old Indian woman defying all social norms, disobeying laws through nonviolent action for tillers’ freedom and rural women’s welfare, totally persuaded me that nonviolence is the most powerful force to change myself and the world around me. I was visiting Gandhian villages in my honey moon when this lady called Krishnammal, an untouchable who married a brahamin, the leader of her community squatting on the ground to cook for the others, refusing to hold any personal property, followed by masses of extremely poor tillers in her fight against corporations, travelling occasionally to Delhi to talk with policy-makers, assisting her husband who became blind in Indian prisons, convinced me to switch from a more intellectual engagement with nonviolence, to action in grassroots social movements.
Iraqi activists asking for training on Gandhian nonviolence are those who determined my next important choice: working with people of the Arab (and Kurdish) world, building bridges of peace and solidarity from Europe to the other banks of the Mediterranean to de-construct neo-colonial relations.”
Martina Pignatti Morano is the President of the Italian NGO Un ponte per…, born from the Italian movement against wars on Iraq. She facilitates the international Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative and the Italian Platform for Civil Peace Interventions, and promotes peacebuilding by Italian civil society groups in conflict areas. She is member of the network Alternatives International, developing the World Social Forum as a permanent global space and process to build alternatives to neoliberalism.
Martina joined the Municipality of Common Goods in Pisa, a wide coalition of associations and political parties who occupied dismissed buildings of a multinational corporation to organize cultural activities and social services for all.
She recently discovered the joy of “birth wihtout violence” by giving birth to her daughter Beatrice at home.
Martina graduated in Economics at Pisa University, received a Master degree and is a PhD candidate in Economics at Siena University. She has been visiting PhD student at Oxford University (UK) and ICRISAT Research Centre (India). She taught for three years Peace Sciences in Pisa University, she has been the co-director of the research review Quaderni Satyagraha and edited the book “Il Peace-keeping non armato”.
