Alessandra Clemente’s plan to end the cycle of violence relies on winning over the mothers and wives of the Camorra mobsters

On 11 June 1997, a 10-year-old girl named Alessandra Clemente heard 41 gunshots from an open window at her home in Naples, as she was waiting for her mother to return for lunch. When the shooting stopped, she ran to the window and saw her mother, Silvia, lying in a pool of blood. Alessandra’s little brother stood next to their mother, wailing. Silvia Clemente was not the assassin’s target, but, at age thirty nine, she had been killed by a stray bullet. Until that day, Alessandra had never heard of the organisation that had ended her mother’s life, and would now begin to shape the rest of hers: the Camorra—the Napolitan mafia.

Twenty-four years later, Alessandra Clemente, now a 34-year-old woman, is running to become the next mayor of Naples. Her campaign includes other relatives of Mafia victims and the son of a top Camorra mobster. At each election rally, Clemente recalls the occasion of her mother’s death.