Introducing another of our creative activists, Maria who has just joined the ?!X team as a writer and volunteer.
Maria Teresa Sette is an Italian journalist. She lives in London but was raised in a small town in Calabria, southern Italy, where cultural and economical underdevelopment along with the oppressive presence of the mafia had profoundly increased her sense of rejection for any kind of illegality, violation of civil and human rights. Journalism has offered her the best way to combine social engagement and creativity. She used to be the news editor of Wired.it. Now she is the editor of The New Londoners, the magazine that strives to encourage informed dialogue between new and settled communities in the capital. She loves photography, speaks Italian, English, a bit of German. And she can’t live without pizza.
MTS: I choose a future where policy makers and citizens work together in order to create conditions for social justice, for giving everyone the opportunity to improve their quality of life. And this could happen only when we all understand that the constructive energy of society relies in the power of human creativity and imagination. Not in the blind accumulation of money.
MTS: There are many inspirational people I look up to. Two names above all: Giovanni Falcone e Paolo Borsellino. They were two Italian magistrate who were killed by the mafia, but also by the indifference of government and society.
MTS: You don’t need to be a hero and get murdered to change the world. Sometimes even a simple and small act can positively affect the order of things. Refusing to be cynical, to passively accept the world as it is may be a good starting point.
MTS: I like to see journalism as a mission; what I have always tried to do is never lowering my guard on human rights abuses here and around the world.
?!X: What’s your favourite song and why?
MTS: One of my favorite songs is Ants Marching by David Matthews Band. It’s a great tune and a sarcastic and bitter metaphor of how we live our lives every day like ants, sometimes without even thinking and choosing how we want to live.