If you ask a handful of Italian citizens what it means to be Italian, it is very unlikely that you get the same answer from everyone. However, if you ask them what the main characteristics of Italians are, they might all answer that we are a very open and generous people.

As the Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Freedoms, we wish we could agree. We wish we could say that Italians don’t build walls. But Italians are building walls and have been doing it for a long time.

Italians are building walls through political populist speeches, where “Italians come first”; Italians are building walls through social media, where they write that “migrants are invading us”; Italians are building walls through street protests, where they shout at people to go back to their homes.

They tweeted it, they shared it on Facebook, they said it, they shouted it, and now they have also done it.

The Italy that shut its door

It happened in a small town of 4,000 people called Goro. On the evening of October 23, 2016, a handful of citizens built wooden barricades on the three streets that lead into the town in order to block access to the migrants that were to be relocated there.

They were 11 women and 8 children. Women and children. Fellow human beings, but born in Aleppo instead of in Goro. The bus that was carrying the migrants had to back up and go to another city.

The other Italy

The good news is that these Italians don't represent the majority of the people in our beautiful country.

In Naples, citizens hanged huge banners in the harbor and in the streets with a very simple message: "Welcome refugees. Napoli is your home."

In Rome, the Centro Baobab was completely organized and run by migrants and volunteers who received and sorted food, clothes, tents and mattresses from citizens living in the neighborhood (that is, before the authorities cleared the entire area at the end of September).

In Lampedusa, all inhabitants are volunteers, who open their doors and share their food and clothes with migrants. In southern Italy and the islands, there are first reception centers and temporary first reception centers, while on the whole territory there are long-term reception centers for adults and unaccompanied minors run by the State administration or the civil society.

Red Cross volunteers serve in the most difficult conditions during long and exhausting shifts, trying to accommodate, care for and feed everybody .The Italian Cost Guard and Navy are not simply patrolling our coasts, but are saving lives every single day. Citizens are donating their goods, time and skills to be of help to people who lost everything but their lives.

The fear of the "other"

After the event in Goro, many public authorities and politicians said they were ashamed of the behavior of this handful of people. However, we can't help but ask ourselves, where did the fear that fueled such an act come from?

Aside from the fact that those were harmless women and their children, what caused the people in Goro and others to fear and reject migrants? Maybe it's the way the issue is presented by the media, as it seems the positive aspects of migration and the successful stories of integration don't hit the headlines.

Maybe the issue is too politicized to talk about it with numbers, facts and figures. Surely the confusion caused by the presence of contradictory or one-sided information is leading many people to fear those who come from the places south of Italy, and to label them as "others," not a part of "us."

We hope that the positive examples of generosity and integration will stop the spreading of fear and will help tear down the walls built to keep out those who are escaping war and violence.