Report
Italian Left's Nicola Fratoianni calls for an alternative: 'We are running to govern'
The Italian Left rallies: ‘Restore the central place of universal public health care, schools and universities, to raise salaries, to make the right to housing an actionable right. … We don’t want a country that spends €20 billion on buying tanks.’
The Italian Left (SI) held the party's first national congress after the European elections. It was an opportunity to take stock of the electoral success, the attacks coming from the right and the process of building a coalition against the right.
In his opening speech, Nicola Fratoianni called for people to stop talking about formulas and definitions, vetoes and alchemy, and get to the substance of the issues: “Enough discussion about how far the outer limits are,” the secretary said. “Let's focus on the construction of the alternative, right in the middle of the political battle. The precondition for this is the united front in defense of the Constitution. And then, there are the upcoming election campaigns, in Emilia Romagna, Umbria and hopefully Liguria, to complete the cycle and confirm the results.”
As for the targeted attacks against the party and Ilaria Salis – who was also present at the congress – on her remarks in favor of occupations by the right-to-housing movements and accusations that she herself lived in social housing illegally in the past, Fratoianni dismissed the notion that they have any merit: “These days, the right wing has set out to attack us, with a lot of effort and some amount of creativity. We’re not taking any lessons in ethics from these right-wingers, who are unable to utter the word ‘anti-fascist.’ Or in legality from a party that still has to return 49 million Euros; or from the government of Santanché and Sgarbi.”
He went on: “We’re not taking any lessons on housing from a government that emptied out the rent fund as its first act in power, and invented new crimes and increased penalties against kids organizing raves, workers defending their jobs, Last Generation activists.”
Fratoianni went on to talk about the party’s goal being that of building a governing force: “We are running to govern this country,” he stressed. “We want to do it in order to restore the central place of universal public health care, schools and universities, to raise salaries, to make the right to housing an actionable right, so that everyone born in Italy is Italian and everyone has equal rights. We don’t want a country that spends €20 billion on buying tanks.”
However, to do so, the party needs to grow; and in order to grow further, SI needs to consolidate the electoral support it gathered for the European elections, with a corresponding reorganization of its structure. At the same time, Fratoianni urged his people to avoid “organizationally twisting themselves into knots”: “We are not going to close ourselves off for months and months in a navel-gazing debate about rules,” he said. “We have to speak to the country, to the young people who voted for us to find a basis for hope.” He stressed: “We are done with the eternal debates about unity, reconstruction, a constituent assembly of the left. Nobody gives a damn about any of that. We want to be a new left.”
Starting from that, he outlined the posture to be adopted: that of maximum openness towards manifestations of social fervor. “We are an open space,” Fratoianni said. “We are asking the civic networks, the candidates, the collective structures that brought life to the election campaign, the activists: come and build this path with us, come and build a stronger left. And I am asking the leadership groups to organize this opening up, to put their ear to the ground, to not remain on the defensive: we have nothing to defend against.”
After Fratoianni’s speech, it was Salis’s turn, whose story is also seen as emblematic for the party’s project of opening up to the outside world. She took to the pulpit with a cautious air, then greeted the audience: “Comrades, it is a pleasure to be here, free,” she said amid applause. “We have shown that solidarity in the name of antifascism and rights is not an abstract ideal but a concrete force: it can make a difference and affect reality. The vote for me was an expression of a desire to change the state of things, but also the way of understanding politics. And I always want to be in tune with this collective energy.”
She then spoke about the hate campaign against her, which has been joined by Giorgia Meloni as well: “By attacking me, the prime minister is attacking a certain worldview; the right wing is inciting hatred through oversimplifications and lies. I’ll say it again: the movements of struggle for housing don’t steal anything from anyone; on the contrary, they are a factor of resistance and an alternative to ‘racketeering,’ as well as to the politics of abandonment and building speculation. I want to do work on these issues, and I hope we can do it together.” “For years, we have been sidelined by the hegemony of capitalist realism, but I feel that something is about to change,” she added.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/fratoianni-apriamo-si-alle-forze-sociali on 2024-07-07