Addiopizzo

Addiopizzo (English: "Goodbye Pizzo") is a grassroots movement established in Sicily to build a community of businesses and consumers who refuse to pay "pizzo" – Mafia extortion money. It is a grassroots social-conscience motivated consumer movement analogous to Fair Trade. The group, led by a generation whose adolescence was characterized by the murders of anti-Mafia judges, journalists and businessmen, operates in the Palermo and Catania metropolitan area, traditionally a Mafia stronghold.

In 2004, Addiopizzo began with five graduates who wanted to open a bar in Palermo. Realising they would be asked to pay a Mafia tithe, they decided instead to organise against the pizzo. Frustrated with the Mafia's stranglehold on the local economy and political life, they peppered the city with stickers that were designed to mimic the look of obituary notices and that read: "A whole people who pays the pizzo is a people without dignity." They organized demonstrations wearing black T-shirts with the Addiopizzo logo, a broken circle with an X in the middle and the words consumo critico ("critical consumption").

In 2007, the association counted 210 traders and entrepreneurs as members and over 9,000 consumers committed to buy only at shops belonging to the "pizzo-free" list. Palermo police and the prefect have agreed to discreetly look after the member shops. Addiopizzo organized programs in more than 90 schools and educational institutes, with the participation of prosecutors and police. In May 2006 they organized a "pizzo-free" festival in one of Palermo's main squares. Addiopizzo made headlines around the world when it launched the pizzo-free supermarket Punto Pizzofree in Palermo, which opened in March 2008.

According to 2008 investigators' estimates, Mafia extorted more than 160 million euros every year from shops and businesses in the Palermo region, with the island of Sicily as a whole paying ten times that figure. Around 80 per cent of Sicilian businesses pay a pizzo. According to Palermo University, the pizzo averages 457 euros ($640) a month for retail traders and 578 euros for hotels and restaurants, but construction companies are asked to pay over 2,000 euros per month according to figures published in the economic daily Il Sole 24 Ore.

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Wikipedia