Ralph welcomes lawyer and advocate, Ugo Mattei, who tells us how he started a movement that successfully stopped Italy from privatizing its water supply. Plus, listener questions!
Fighting for Water
Ralph Nader Radio Hour
Ralph Nader
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2019
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Ugo Mattei is Distinguished Professor of International and Comparative Law at University of California, Hastings and at the University of Turin, Italy. He is a widely published scholar in economic and political aspects of law and his work has been translated into many languages. He masterminded, as lawyer and an activist, the Italian campaign against the privatization of water, which was successfully completed in June 2011 with a national referendum endorsing Professor Mattei’s plan to recognize water as a common. He is the co-author with Laura Nader of Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal, and also authored The Turning Point in Private Law.
“People understand how important it is not to leave water in corporate hands. Giving water to corporations is putting ourselves literally and physically at the mercy of those monsters.”
Ugo Mattei, lawyer and activist who masterminded the Italian campaign against the privatization of water
“People today after ten years of neo-liberalism and social media are not able to understand physical struggles. The social media are against social movements. It’s complete rhetoric and narrative that social media are crucial for the success of these kinds of battles.”
Ugo Mattei, lawyer and activist who masterminded the Italian campaign against the privatization of water
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. |
| 0:05.0 | Stand up, stand up. |
| 0:07.0 | You've been sitting way too long. |
| 0:10.0 | Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan along with my |
| 0:17.3 | co-host David Feldman. How you doing today David? |
| 0:19.7 | Very good, very good. And I understand you have a bit of a trivia question for us. Yeah. Yeah. I thought this would be fun. You know, we're hearing a lot about whistleblowers this week and I thought I'd throw this out as a trivia question. |
| 0:33.0 | One of us three, you me or Ralph Nader, is personally responsible for the modern usage of the word whistleblower. |
| 0:41.0 | Oh, one of the... |
| 0:42.0 | So my choices are Steve Scrovan, David Feldman, or Ralph Nader. |
| 0:45.0 | Yeah, what do you think of the three of us? |
| 0:47.0 | Well, you know what? |
| 0:49.0 | I coached university high school football so I had a whistle around my neck and blown it but you |
| 0:54.7 | know what I'm going to go with David Feldman. |
| 0:56.7 | I'm pretty sure it's not me Ralph you want to finish your guess. |
| 1:00.6 | I guess you were referring to me in the 1971 Historic Conference on Whistleblowers that we had in Washington, D.C. |
| 1:08.0 | The idea is to give them an ethical dimension. |
| 1:11.0 | Whistleblowers then were seen as snitches, tattle tails. |
| 1:15.1 | And they now have a really critical role to play in making large corporations and |
| 1:21.0 | government, unions and other institutions universities accountable. |
| 1:25.5 | So it's not a trivial question, David. |
| 1:28.4 | No, it's not. |
| 1:29.2 | And why did you pick a word whistleblower for our usage fans. |
... |
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