Welcome to my first posting on Open Borders. Enjoy a really well thought out debate by many very educated and caring individuals who want the best for the world. It is about more than "thinking positive" or "doing the right thing" to make the world a better place. It is going to take sacrifice, compassion, and hard work on the part of everyone to make our future survival together as human's viable with such a large population. We have to share our resources wisely and really learn to respect each other.

My month long stay in this old part of Palermo, Sicily last month, February 2018 before the Italian elections took place, I watched the young men in potential, Mafia and African gangs, on mopeds, in groups on the streets. They would be everywhere throughout the city. It was reported, there was a war between the two groups who were responsible for human immigrant trafficking and drugs. I had read about the recent death of an immigrant in one of the African gangs who was killed and the Sicilians community was very concerned about retaliation from the African community. The history of course, was very complex.

These photos I took on the same block as the Hotel I stayed in and it was at the Market where I ate where I did my shopping several times a day. 

The young men you see in the bottom picture and other African gangs would stay up most of the night and play foosball with one table which was very interesting to see.  This was all they had to play on for the entire group of men who were in there mid-twenties. To see young adult males who are still mentally immature and may stay that way, in groups playing a game of foosball, on one table, yelling all night long when they scored at the top of their lungs made me laugh. It also clearly let me know they didn't have "day jobs" and they must have had a lot of alcohol to play all night and probably were doing a little friendly wagering as well, to make it more interesting. Boys will be boys, in Sicily. I mean having a "celebration, Sicilian style, " yelling at each other full of passion. Sicilians are very passionate and not shy about expressing their opinions publicly. I tend to be this way myself, but Sicilians are Artist's and take this to a whole new level. I got tired just watching them and listening to them all night.

 There was even a sign posted in my hotel that said, if you don't like the noise at night in the Market, it is a part of the Sicilian Celebration and you are welcome to go out and join them. I thought that was a very diplomatic way of handling the situation. Instead of saying, "Don't complain to us about the noise in the Market, go out and party with them." These young men are the families of everyone who live there so they aren't criminals to their Sicilian grandmother's ....it is the culture. But to the other cultures who are escaping Africa, or having to leave their countries and end up on the shores of Sicily they are inhuman to not understand the suffering of the asylum seekers. If you are a traveler like myself who is welcomed because I am from a  white privileged country where I have some money to spend that is one issue, but why should any country reject people who come from countries who don't have privilege and resources? 

There are ways to find solutions to manage these problems if we want to coordinate and problem solve. 

We must try because it is no longer acceptable to hide and ignore these problems.