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“The Democratic Party as it should be”

So much tradition and so much novelty. After all, a feeling. At seven the lights of the stage change color. And the blue square of the sardines turns red. Modena City Ramblers and Bella hello, 40 thousand punches raised and hands raised, as at the concert on May 1st, in this square on August 8th, three times larger than Piazza Maggiore. It is here that the Bolognese defeated the Austrians in 1848, also that of a liberation from the invader: “This is the flower of the partisan, who died for freedom”. They even invoke Contessa from the front rows – do you remember her? – the one who did “Companions from the fields and from the workshops, take the sickle, bring the hammer”.

So much tradition and so much novelty we said. Because it took these four boys, not really millennials but almost, to urge the awakening from torpor. To make Bella Ciao sing, A Hundred Steps, the Bandabardò. And to bring to the stage a Nigerian boy (speaking of discontinuities and security decrees) who tells his story: “The words of the Constitution have called us in Italy,” men are all the same “, rich and poor, Christians and Muslims, I left Niger because those words didn’t make me afraid. ” Or to give the stage to Fabrizio Barca to talk about internal areas and to Sandro Ruotolo, historian sent now under escort, to explain what deaths are at work and why the “mafia is a mountain of shit”.

Look at this Mattia Santori, he is a natural leader, with his somewhat casual look, a little Bolognese jean a little social center, dark jeans with a turn-up on a sneakers. He moves slowly and confidently, even if there is a delusion of cameras around him. The hands, when he declares, always in his pocket. The boy can do it. Even to move in this magma, which we chroniclers of the twentieth century perhaps struggle to understand. The magma of a symbolism that evokes the left as it always was, before it was razed to the ground, but which intercepts a new push, because there is still no party capable of reigniting politicization in the era of the rejection of politics.

It is the same magma, confused and creative at the limits of the paradox, of a push to the left, without ever mentioning Bonaccini. Santori never makes a clear endorsement, on the contrary, he is careful not to get sucked into the party eddy, the language of the acronyms and sides, the “constituent” path of the Democratic Party, to be managed with caution and at the right times. But it is clear that the very future of the movement is linked to the victory of the left in Emilia, even more so now that the very meaning of this election campaign has changed, in which the candidates, with their faces and their programs, seem to have disappeared behind the great conflict between “bullying” and “polite politics”. Perhaps he is right: “It is not Mattia Santori – he tells us – who created the sardines, but the energy that is coming, and this is a first victory because it has changed the political climate in Italy”. And you understand this prudence by talking to the younger ones. Many, very many, explain to you that they are against Salvini, but woe if the sardines are canned in one of the existing containers. Or if they are homologated, also becoming a container like the existing ones. It is a thrust that thrives on this spontaneity, or perhaps this illusion.

Energy, feeling, even before structure or perspective, this is the Bolognese square a week after the vote. Square worried, tense, where many ask journalists forecasts, polls. Mainly middle-aged, family and strollers square, informed, very informed, reading the newspapers and watching TV. You talk to us and you realize that the bulk is that famous world of the left which, in recent years, has become emotionally disconnected, due to its divisions, the castling in the Palace, its distorting, the idea that, after all, participation it was superfluous in the era of leaderism. Here is a small group. Mara, 69, says: “Look around. The faces are the aged ones of the left of the past, there is also a lot of nostalgia, I have always voted left. Tell me: Bonaccini who does it? I’m worried”. Beside, Anselmo, one of the many Apulians who have worked in Bologna for a lifetime: “I have never had anything against the parties, on the contrary, but then … The mistakes they made. These guys had the merit of awakening politics. This square is a bit like the Democratic Party should be. ” It’s all like this, the novelty that rekindles an ancient feeling. Left, net of semantic prudence.

There is everything, even the youngest ones who came only for the concert. They say it openly: “It’s an event, it’s free, I came for a beer and listen to music.” And there is also a lot of Pd. Stefano Caliandro, group leader outgoing in the region, greets, speaks with several: “We all swim in the same sea, and in the same direction. We have a duty to contaminate ourselves. ” Yes, contamination, a process that is already underway, at least here in Emilia, because in this story (and in this square) there is an Emilian specificity, made of civism, awareness, participation, antibodies capable of activating. Look what makes an impression, in these times of sad passions and extreme words. At the end of the day the word “Salvini” remained unnamed, on stage and by the protagonists, as a target and as an interlocutor, a sign it is possible to strip the themes of personalization and leaderism. But it was the biggest mass demonstration against him. Maybe also for this.

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