or I as International Juridical Organization for Environment and Development

In the late 80s I found my first job at IJO, an organization created by a lawyer based in Roma, Avv. Mario Gutierres.

He was quite successful dealing with separations and divorces of famous people, but had a penchant for international affairs. One of the few people I met in that world who was spending money with international cooperation rather than making it.

He was also member of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, based in Moscow at Gorbachev time; Sakharov was also a member.

I remember we were exchanging messages with Moscow and Washington from the lawyer’s studio, with one of the first modem, just few words at a very slow and irregular pace. We were using Greennet, an antecedent to what is now known as Internet and did not existed at the time.

At a very little scale, but it was history. I also attended the European preparation meeting in Paris for the first Earth Summit in Rio. Remember a concert of Mory Kante.

Black and white 2

Of course, there is the historical heritage of the exploitation black people suffered by white people, and this need to be acknowledged, taken into consideration and, in some way, repaid.

With special intensity in certain places but almost everywhere, black and white does matter still a lot.

But my point was that once ‘repaid’ the crimes committed in the past (and the present) by white people against black people and once enforced by law and culture a substantial equality of rights and opportunities, racism will not disappear, it will remain and transform. Because racism, or the fear for the different, is connaturated with the human being.