We remain appalled by what happened in San Benedetto del Tronto, where a well-known far-right public figure, a representative of Futuro Nazionale, physically assaulted a migrant person in a state of clear vulnerability on the street. The assault was filmed in a calculated and instrumental way, intended to be shown on social media, almost as a warning and a low-level attempt to boost their own online visibility.

Once, people were ashamed to declare themselves racists. Today, with figures like this fanning the winds of hatred, being openly racist has become a spectacle—not only in broad daylight but, above all, in the glow of our phone screens.

Poverty is disturbing because it forces us to delve into stories, motivations, behaviours, fragilities, and deviances. Choosing to stand alongside people living in conditions of marginalisation means deciding to enter into often complex and painful existences, whose full dimensions we may never completely understand.

We at On the Road are often called because someone asks us to “remove” homeless people from the streets, as if taking them out of sight were equivalent to solving the problem. But this is precisely where the central issue emerges: in a system that tends to push many people towards invisibility, not being seen ends up coinciding with not existing. And not existing coincides with dehumanisation, with having no rights at all—not even the right to privacy.

The poor people we see on the streets cease to be recognised as people: they become objects to be framed, photographs to be shared, content to be fed to the algorithm. In this way, their image is exploited to fuel prejudice, consensus, and social division, turning poverty into a spectacle and human dignity into a commodity.

The distress is not only that of people living in poverty. It is also that of citizens unable to bear the weight of what our socio-economic systems produce, leaving so many people behind. The presence of marginalisation confronts us with a collective responsibility that we would often prefer not to see.

For those living without a home, the daily struggle is first and foremost a struggle to remain visible. When you have nothing left, this becomes an almost superhuman effort. It requires an active choice, a determination that not everyone in this condition can sustain. Some stop believing that there is still someone willing to look at them, listen to them, welcome them.

How much strength does it take to keep believing in others? How much strength does it take to expose yourself again, risking yet another rejection?

What if everything had been taken from you? What if you had lost even the few personal belongings you owned, your documents, the references that attest to your very existence? What if you had been rendered truly invisible, and yet, despite everything, you still found within yourself the determination and the desire to be seen—an essential condition for being able to climb back up? Wouldn’t you, too, feel the urge to throw yourself into the middle of the street and shout, with the sole weight of your presence, “I exist”? I exist even if you do not see me. I exist even if everything has been taken from me. I exist even if I do not match what you would want me to be.

Having the power to interrupt, even for just a moment, the flow of everyday life to force us to see is a silent yet immensely powerful protest.

The strength of that protest became evident precisely in the reactions it provoked. Faced with a gesture that was certainly disturbing but not violent, there was an immediate will to erase, cancel, remove. The act of forcibly pushing away, assaulting, or striking is nothing other than the expression of a growing inability to understand complexity.

It is extremely serious that, in the historical period we are living through—marked by walls, pushbacks, hatred, and fear—the only response that seems to be accepted is “private justice”.

In an increasingly individualistic society, we have a duty to go beyond the wall that has been built around us: to remain vigilant and allied in recognising the other, in restoring visibility, in shifting our gaze towards those who carry within them a world of complexity that we cannot even imagine.

Let us remain human.