Boxing as a school of life. Because today to rebel is to stay within the rules

“We defend and strike”. Thus begins each of the ten chapters that make up The “Manifesto of the Strikers”, a term inspired by the tool used by boxing masters. For some months now, he has been carrying him around in Italian gyms, in suburban squares, in square meetings and in every place where there is a ring, it is not the usual boxer, he is not a master, an organizer or one of us old nostalgic for this blessed one noble art which seems lost to us. To present it in bookstores, schools and universities, to divulge it, to stress bosses and newspaper editors to publish at least one excerpt is a moving volcano that responds to the name of Federica Guglielmini. Boxer, writer and educator but above all young woman who seem almost contradictions in terms with the archaic world of noble art. But the Manifesto of the hitters – which arrives on the long wave of the book “A short distance” written with Virginia Perini – is the layout of a revolution, the laying down on paper of a cultural shock, the concentrate of a philosophy to which they adhered people who believe in it: co-written with the great artist Dome Bulfaro, it has among its signatories the former boxer and teacher Renato De Donato, the TV writer and author Riccardo Mauri, the doctor Mario Ireneo Sturla, the illustrator Mauro Cicarè and the cultural mediator Michele Carrieri.

In fact, there isn’t a day when newspapers and television don’t give us boxing terms used unknowingly: blow, knockdown, knockout, groggy, sparring partner, victory on points. But shall we stop at the external aspect of the phenomenon? No, Federica was needed who, by putting together her personal and professional experiences, went to the essence. A cultural shock that of the Colpitori which arrives 114 years after the “Manifesto of Tommaso Marinetti”, a collection in declamatory form of the thought of the Futurists. “Marinetti praised social speed – explains Guglielmini – We want to give a brushstroke to the time machine. We want to awaken the collective consciousness through the boxer icon. We are revolutionaries and rebels who invest in culture after receiving and responding with the blows of the pugilistic metaphor. After the 2000s, society was hit by an evident social fragility. Recent news events show us that young girls and boys experience severe anxiety because youth society has entered a sort of fluid age. Here, the manifesto of the hitters offers an answer to all of this”. It is not for nothing that Dome Bulfaro is one of the signatories of the manifesto, who has chosen “Keating” as a nickname in boxing style, the unforgotten professor of “Dead Poets Society” played by Robin Williams. And another signatory is Dr. Mario Ireneo Sturla, who has learned to “treat the wounds that cannot be seen”.

A manifesto that aims to stimulate courage and social awareness. “In Italian society there is no more courage, we are aiming for a re-evolution to reawaken body language, rekindle that flame that has remained alight and reappears when we use the boxing metaphor in language. But today the cultural cognitive fabric is also missing. There are community psychologists who challenge social degradation. Who takes care of us in society? We answer this question with the Manifesto: Before chaos occurs let’s use boxing. To prevent and respond, we create that “Short distance” which is also the title of my book”. In short, only boxing can break the chaos. “As the psychologist Paolo Crepet also says, rules and educational values ​​are needed to defend oneself from problems. Boxers, whether or not they actually box, can convey these values. The values ​​of heroism and rebellion are not represented by the full nude of the Maneskin but today, paradoxically, they are obtained by staying within the rules. We must be ourselves to create society rather than suffer it. This is why we Strikers are building a planning without the nostalgia which is the limit of those who see boxing anchored in the past. With nostalgia, boxing dies of hunger”.

“To rebel is to stay within the rules” is therefore the deepest message contained in the ten chapters of the “Manifesto” available on the net. Don’t miss the opportunity to read it and… read it again.