These past weeks, the crime pages have been filled with horrifying stories. From north to south across Italy, reports of parents who for years sold their disabled daughters—minors with physical and mental disabilities—to relatives, friends, and strangers for sexual abuse. Among the world's horrors, this one perhaps deserves a place apart: repeated violence against the body and soul of a disabled child (doubly vulnerable, then) inflicted by those who brought them into the world. But the press also remembers to tell us about the good that exists. And so we learned the story of Giulia, who received a bus stop as a gift.
After completing an internship, Giulia Rondini, a young woman from Mantua, was hired as a permanent server at a fast-food restaurant in the city. A remarkable story of work and independence—one that offers genuine hope for the real inclusion of people with Down syndrome in a country like Italy, which struggles to translate good intentions into practice. But obstacles have a way of appearing. Giulia's future nearly fell apart over a logistical problem: the bus she needed to take to work ended its route just short of the restaurant. When the local transit authority, Apam, learned of the problem, they decided to extend the route slightly—a small detour that now allows Giulia to cross the main road safely on her way to work.
Not long after, Down syndrome made headlines again—this time on the cover of Vogue. A true revolution. The latest edition of the Dutch version of the famous magazine features a beautiful photograph of a mother and her son, both with striking blue eyes. The mother is Amanda Booth, a 31-year-old American model known for campaigns with Lancôme and Playboy; the son is Micah, born in 2014 with Down syndrome. "This is the first time someone with Down syndrome has been on the cover of Vogue. What an honor!" Amanda wrote on Instagram. She explained that she doesn't obsess over each of her son's developmental milestones, but simply wants to live with her family in peace and joy. Together with Micah's father, Mike Quinones, she created a profile called lifewithmicah to document their everyday life. The goal is to show that a child with Down syndrome lives no differently than any other child. "Our little guy is so incredible that I completely forget about his syndrome," Amanda said. After a pregnancy without prenatal testing ("It wouldn't have changed anything"), the diagnosis came when Micah was three months old. "At first we were really worried. But as the days passed and Micah showed us who he was, we thought about it less and less."
Giulia Galeotti, 2018