«I am a woman, I love another woman and I am not a mother, but I am no less a woman for this. We are not living wombs, but people with their rights”. When Elly Schlein said these words at the close of the Democratic Party’s electoral campaign, more than one dem executive on stage understood that the new deputy was already studying as a leader. And it is precisely the image of the anti-Meloni that the candidate secretary is now betting on to win her race for the leadership of the Democratic Party, with the aim of involving in her person the hopes of the centre-left voters who are asking for a clear break with the past and a leadership capable of countering that of the premier.
Born in Switzerland in 1985 to an American father and an Italian mother (both university professors), maternal grandfather an anti-fascist and socialist senator from 1972 to 1979, Schlein has a “pedigree” of those who can serve in life. At 5 he plays the piano, at 15 he secretly buys an electric guitar, at 26, in 2011, a little behind the times, he graduates in Law at the University of Bologna. Also in the same period he founded Progrè, an association that deals with migrants and prisons. But first, in 2008, she volunteered for the electoral campaign of Barack Obama. Therefore, Elly has always had a passion for politics. In 2013, after 101 snipers — if in reality they weren’t even more — shot Romano Prodi barring his access to the Quirinale, she founds “Occupy Pd” and together with other young people occupies the dem headquarters to protest against that parliamentary ambush and against the policy of broad agreements launched by the Democratic Party after the “non-victory” of Pier Luigi Bersani at the elections. In the same year, however, he decides to join that party, and supports the race Pippo Civati to the secretariat. Her candidate loses but a year later she flies to Strasbourg obtaining 53,000 preferences in the Northeast constituency. A great result.
A year later he left the Democratic Party: «For too long I haven’t recognized myself in anything this government does. It is worth fighting within the party as long as the party exists, but I fear it no longer exists », she writes on her Facebook page. He has it with Matthew Renzi with which he still continues to have it. After her experience in Strasbourg, during which she dealt with the problems of migration with great commitment, she threw herself into a new political adventure, supporting Stefano Bonaccini who is a candidate for the presidency of the Emilia-Romagna regional council for the second time , of which, once he wins the elections, he goes to deputy. In the midst of that electoral campaign she becomes the idol of the most radical left when, learning that Matthew Salvini she is having dinner in a small village in Emilia-Romagna, waiting for him outside the restaurant, like a simple militant, and addresses him thus: «Why have you never come to Brussels for any of the 22 meetings of the negotiation on the most important migration reform for the Italy?”. The reference is to the re-discussion of the treaties of Dublin who had seen her firsthand during her years in the European Parliament. The leader of the League turns his back on her and goes away muttering: «I followed the important meetings». And she yells after him: “The rules are changed at the tables because it’s easy to tweet.”
In politics, Schlein is both radical and cautious, declining the «but also» of Veltronian memory in a contemporary key, as evidenced by his stance on Ukraine with lukewarm support for sending military aid to Kiev. She is passionate about cinema, music and video games (her favorite is Monkey Island, a captivating pirate story), not too long ago Schlein suffered an anti-Semitic attack (his father is Jewish) which also targeted his nose, as in the most hackneyed scripts. You gave an answer to that aggression that many didn’t like: «Mine is an Etruscan nose». Ruth Dureghellopresident of the Jewish Community of Rome, did not like it and replied in kind: “If in response to a despicable anti-Semitic attack on your nose you confirm the stereotype on which it is based, you are not of much help against anti-Semitism”.
