It is a spring Sunday in the Pratello district, in Bologna, and a week has passed since the victory of the former MEP Elly Schlein in the primaries of the Democratic Party. Claudio, a 29-year-old Sicilian who emigrated to the city in 2013 for study reasons, strolls along the arcaded street in the historic center and enters the Pd Muzzi-Bandiera club, at number 90, one of the most active in promoting the Schlein motion, where you can still breathe of party. «I’m delighted, when he won I couldn’t believe it!», He says to Mary DeMartino, 30 years old, city councilor elected to the National Assembly dem on Schlein’s list in Bologna and representative of the club. Both remember when they met the new secretary within the European federalist movement, founded by Altiero Spinelli in 1943, «when the states were still at war but Spinelli was already thinking of peace, knowing that to maintain it it was necessary to create a real own federation: a political union, not just an economic one», explains De Martino. “Now only the economic one has been formed, but without the political one, Europe is missing a leg”, continues the 29-year-old. Now he hopes that Schlein will bring the cause of the European federalists “on a national political table in a serious way” and for this reason, despite not having a Pd card and not dealing with politics for some years, he voted for it. His victory today seems like “a dream”.
Even for De Martino, the election of the 37-year-old native of Lugano appears like a dream, cultivated since he first met her in 2014 close to the European elections. «You said very clear words, which were not fashionable at the time, against the governments of broad agreements, for the rights of LGBTQI people + and against any form of precariousness. I told her that if they nominated her I would gladly commit to her candidacy. And so it was. When she left the Pd I had started my militancy in Bologna and I didn’t follow her, but I was very sorry about her. Anyone who knows me knows that in my heart I hoped she would become the new dem leader», she says sitting on the sofa while looking at the black and white photograph of the partisan Irma Bandiera, executed by the fascists, which stands out on a red-painted wall in a pantheon of notables : Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, Che Guevara, Enrico Berlinguer and Aldo Moro. «They wanted to represent both because the Democratic Party comes from a left-wing and former Christian Democrat tradition. I arrived later and I respected the choice », she explains. But the figure she prefers about her is that of the Bolognese partisan, “a fighter and loyal to her comrades”. Chosen by Schlein as leader of the National Assembly in Bologna against party logics that until a few months before had put him in the minority, De Martino in recent years has tried to open the headquarters to the realities of civil society that defend specific causes and to young people far from the Democratic Party, hosting meetings of the European federalist movement, the Refugees Welcome association, cultural events open to non-members, including poetry lessons held by young writers and a literary contest. The 30-year-old is guided by a poem by Edoardo Sanguineti, “the politics of everyday things and words” which in her vision should complement the traditional methods of militancy: a model she still tries to give vigor to and of which she sees in Elly Schlein the perfect interpreter.
Alternative campaign
Together with the other members, he organized the electoral campaign in favor of the candidate in an innovative way, with the “AperitivElly”, which combined the classic Wednesday assembly with recreational moments in which, however, “we ended up talking about politics” together with managers and representatives who could give those informal debates a voice in institutional tables. The idea, Mery says, came from her classmate at Palazzo D’Accursio, the former sardine and current city councilor Mattia Santori, who took the Pd card close to Elly Schlein’s campaign in the Muzzi-Bandiera club and who was elected together with De Martino to the National Assembly, achieving what he had failed to do with his movement after the elections in Emilia Romagna: broaden the dem base and ensure that the discontent that emerged in the squares was taken in charge from the Pd.
The former sardines
The victory on Sunday 26 February seems to tie the thread of that story back together. The network of young people who had come together and recognized to criticize the right led by Matteo Salvini and the left incapable of proposing an alternative under the sardine theme continued to weave relationships. Many of them have reconnected around the figure of Elly Schlein, who in recent years has never lost sight of the activists she met during the regional election campaign who had elected her vice president. Edoardo Carli, 27 years old and originally from Prato, had coordinated the movement in Tuscany, but he was no upstart in politics: a former militant of Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà with Nichi Vendola, a member of the Democratic Party since 2019 after his election as secretary of Nicola Zingaretti , today he found himself supporting the Schlein motion alongside Marco Furfaro and Emiliano Fossi together with other former sardines also because he understood that his vision would bring about the change that was missed three years ago. «I don’t know how much it was considered a mistake not to let sardines enter the Democratic Party at the time, but many of the comrades came from the outside world, and we were far-sighted because we had interpreted the change correctly. The Democratic Party had to open up to civil society but more than anything else it had to be called to listen to the people. An opening in this sense, towards people who live a daily life distant from politics. I think that the Democratic Party must go back to doing this, to interpreting people’s needs and then promoting a series of active policies that serve to improve the material condition of their lives,” Carli told TPI, who animated the electoral campaign at the club La Libertà in Viaccia, the historic left-wing district of Prato.
A la carte policy
The young people who contributed to Elly Schlein’s surprising victory by overturning the vote that had leaked from most circles are left-wing militants passionate about the idea of Europe and confident in a plural party that will win again by listening to ordinary people, interested under 35s to public affairs and disappointed by the parties, but also activists attracted by an “à la carte” politics that defends specific causes. Many non-members saw in Schlein the possibility of winning their battles through the Democratic Party despite having never voted for him before. From Lbtqi+ rights to the rescue of migrants at sea, from the ecological transition to the legalization of soft drugs, Schlein has spoken clearly on these issues.
“Everyone has pointed out that she is the first youngest woman to lead the Democratic Party, I say that she is the first openly anti-prohibitionist, and sorry if it is not much,” she comments on TPI Antonella Soldo, spokesperson for Meglio Legale, a social promotion association that deals with the legalization of cannabis and the decriminalization of the use of other substances. Soldo finds it hard to forget the words of Schlein’s challenger at the Nazareno, Stefano Bonaccini, who had criticized Mattia Santori for having declared that he grows cannabis at home because “changes must be made in the institutions”. With the election of Schlein, who has openly declared herself in favor of legalization earning a post of greetings on the Instagram page of the association of 67 thousand followers, she hopes to find a wider side in Parliament, after the resistance encountered in the last legislature to the within the same Pd. With some exceptions, including the new faces of Schlein’s magic circle, from Furfaro to Chiara Gribaudo. For this reason, together with other supporters of the cause of Meglio Legale – which as a trans-party association also welcomed the election of another anti-prohibitionist, Riccardo Magi, to the secretariat of +Europe – he voted in the dem primaries for the first time. Schlein’s key in the eyes of activists far from tout-court politics remains language: positions and clear-cut words. “In all these years we have felt that a Pd could not be created that said things that were too left-wing and too clear-cut about rights, and we found ourselves having in government a far-right party that says extreme things about rights and a secretary elected because he also says clear things about legalization», concludes Soldo.
Climate activists
The emphasis on the ecological transition has had the same effect on the many young people who have filled the marches in recent years to protest against climate change. And even Fridays for Future, which did not endorse Schlein, welcomed his election with cautious enthusiasm. “Without a doubt the people who have approached our movement in the past have voted for it,” he comments TPI Marco Modugno, 20-year-old political science student and national spokesman. «Schlein won thanks to a program and a way of speaking close to our sensibilities, it is no coincidence that he used the same terms used by the movements, he brought something that is not seen elsewhere and cannot be seen in Bonaccini. His way of doing has touched this generation that knows it is not represented. The fact that this effort comes from a young person, not only in terms of age but of party experience for his internal history, has done better than any rhetoric of a scrapper, which in fact Schlein has not used», continues Modugno. But skepticism towards the dem remains, and the new secretary remains a special observer. «The Democratic Party remains the Democratic Party. The party has made mistakes both in the social and climate fields, showing minimal attention to the climate », she concludes.
“Climate emergency is a phrase that resonates several times in Elly Schlein’s victory speech,” write the spokesmen Marzio Chirico and Ester Barelma the day after the vote. «But it is in the passage from words to deeds, from general proclamations to policies, that the radical change from greenwashing is distinguished. In the night between 26 and 27 February, the time for promises ended for Schlein and the time for facts began. What will the new secretary of the Democratic Party do?
#Schlein #generation #journey #among #young #people #win