“The title of Time ‘Soumasalis’ against Greens and Left Alliance? I consider it crap. And it’s typical rubbish from those who consider fights as a matter of public order. I saw that on the claims of Ilaria Salis for the right to housing there have been avalanches of scandalized statements from the right, the same right that every day offers us convicted, arrested and plea bargained people: there is an endless queue, I could make a list that never ends”. So a On air (La7) the leader of Italian Left Nicola Fratoianni comments the headline that appeared on the front page of the right-wing newspaper Direct Tommaso Cernoa powerful broadside against the two deputies of Avs, Angelo Bonelli and Fratoianni himself, “guilty” of having nominated the trade unionist for the 2022 elections Aboubakar Soumahoro (currently deputy of the Mixed Group and leader of the neo-movement Italia Plural) and at this year’s European elections Ilaria Salis, who claimed responsibility for his housing struggles on Facebook.
Fratoianni unconditionally supports the new MEP: “Ilaria claimed to have occupied the house and to fight against the fact that there are vacant houses. I remember that in Lombardy There are 19 thousand houses in Aler vacant. And I also fight the idea that there are a million Italians who cannot pay the rent. I fight the idea that in the last 5 years 236 thousand families have been evicted. I fight the idea that I will receive lessons on legality, on the right to housing, on popular interests from someone government which as its first act emptied the rent support fund, 300 million euros, to give this money to Serie A football clubs – he continues – sending thousands of citizens onto the streets who no longer have a roof over their heads in our suburbs. Yes, I fight that idea there. And I fight the idea that fights are a matter of public order. On the contrary, I think and hope that every time there is an injustice there is someone who organizes collectively to claim a right in the fields, in the cities, in the workplace. It is right to rebel and I claim this with the utmost conviction“.
The Avs deputy then responds to Marianna Aprilehost of the program together with Luca Teleseon the two demonstrations that saw him alongside the opposition: on 18 June in Piazza Santi Apostoli in Rome to protest together with Pd, M5s and +Europa against the reforms of premiership and autonomyyesterday in Piazza della Libertà, in Latina, next to the Democratic secretary Elly Schlein and to delegations of M5s, Action and Italia Viva to demonstrate against gangmaster and in memory of Satnam Singhthe 31-year-old Indian laborer who died after being abandoned in front of his home by his employer shortly before losing his right arm.
Aprile asks Fratoianni: “What do we want to call this? Technical tests of left-wing unity? Wide shot? Expanded field? What were you in these two squares?”.
“I really have no passion for the adjectives of the field – replies the secretary of Si – I have a passion for the things we must do and for the possibility of offering an alternative in this country in the face of this bad right which splits the country with differentiated autonomy, which wants to put all the power in the hands of the Prime Minister by reducing the powers of the President of the Republic, which takes the country backwards on fundamental rights and work”.
And he makes a final appeal to all the opposition: “I say it like this, exactly as I said it in 2022. Enough with incomprehensible divisions and build unity starting from the things on which it is possible to find convergence: not only opposition to wrong reforms but also another idea of work, school, health, housing. It is possible to do it and in recent days we have begun to do it. I would be in favor of not stopping and moving forward with determination“.
