Valeria Campagna: common politics – Martino Mazzonis

Valeria Campagna has a small series of records in politics. When in 2016 she was elected to the municipality of Latina she was not twenty years old and was the youngest city councilor in Italy. Five years later she was the most voted in the party that supported the mayor Damiano Coletta, elected with the left-wing civic list Latina common good. We eat in a restaurant on the town hall square.

“Nice pedestrian area isn’t it? There was resistance, but today I would say that everyone is happy ”, she begins once she gets over her interview anxiety. But why does a girl not yet twenty years old decide to do institutional politics? “I felt uneasy already in high school: it was a somewhat right-wing school, no one was involved in politics, we were always the same group at demonstrations. So I thought about running for the school board. They told me I was ‘small, and also female’, and I was not elected, I tried again and it went well. The other training ground was scouting, where the idea of ​​being a community is central: putting up a tent well is useful for you and for the others who will sleep in it ”.

The combination of scouting and militancy is interesting, it attenuates a certain radicalism and adds community spirit, an aspect that in Italy, with the end of the parties, seems to have been lost.

In 2016 the municipality of Latina was in a phase of renewal, after two consecutive commissioners for corruption and connivance with organized crime. Before that, there were two mandates as mayor of Ajmone Finestra, elected for the first time in 1993 with the Italian Social Movement. But in the meantime, a civic movement from below was also growing. Today Campagna seems to want to participate by representing his generation and young women in particular. “Those who can escape from this city, there is a lack of job opportunities, cultural offerings, spaces for aggregation. I dream of contributing to making this place a place to stay “.

Among the merits that the civic majority attributes to itself is that of having awakened the critical conscience and participation of citizens. “The town hall door was closed. We have created a system of collaboration agreements, ie agreements between associations or groups of citizens and the municipality to take care of things ”, he explains. “If the goods belong to everyone, it does not mean that they belong to no one or that only the institution has to deal with them. Common goods means that we do a little piece each. There was a living fabric, it just needed to be sewn and formalized. Today the difficulty is to prevent these structures from fossilizing. It’s a process ”.

The list of collaboration agreements, forums, neighborhood houses run by citizens is long, and it’s a pleasure to listen to it.

In the first round of the last administrative elections, the former mayor Vincenzo Zaccheo took more votes than the outgoing mayor Coletta. Coletta’s second round victory signals that there is an active base mobilizing for change, but his disadvantage in the first round underlines that there is still a lot of work to be done. Of course not all is well: there is the girl sitting at a bar who stops Campagna to greet her and compliment her on what she is doing, but there are also the works of the municipal library that have been going on for too long: “I challenge you to find a room where you can present a book to Latina without having to pay, here there is no space “.

In Italy, being a young woman doesn’t help if you want to be in politics. “Seeing your work recognized is difficult,” says Campagna. “But you have a charge, and they can’t take that away from you. It is not a question of having visibility or power, but of seeing what you do recognized ”. After lunch we go in front of the building that housed the Bank of Italy, a piece of rationalist monumental architecture that was in danger of becoming a shopping center and was bought by the municipality. Will it be possible to make it a cultural and meeting center like those that exist in many European cities and beyond? “Perhaps! I’m bending over backwards, looking for ideas, institutional formulas, experiences made elsewhere ”.

A few years ago Italy was ruled by a young leader who had to change everything. Then that leader was defeated by a political movement that had to change everything. How can you not be corrupted by this policy and not forget why you started? “’I know’ just got out of the cardiologist ‘is that okay as an answer? I’m finishing my studies after getting my bachelor’s degree in public administration, I’m missing five exams for my master’s and I’ve got my masters in local administration. In November I won a public competition. My friends are going to have an aperitif tonight, I am not. And I started seeing Game of Thrones ten years late! I don’t have time for series, but I had to see this one, otherwise I didn’t understand all those jokes about political intrigues ”. The fact that she has the courageous Noi – Latina community behind her, the civic list that she helped to create, gives her great motivation. “There are people who have trusted you and are expecting work”.

Now that the parties have lost all ability to be present on the territory and to involve and connect citizens, those who make politics in a medium-small center feel alone. There are no great ideas, ideals, and there is no exchange with a center to accompany you, notes Campagna. “I have difficulty recognizing myself in a party or container of what was the center left. The local civic world condemns you to isolation. I participated in the first steps of Common Vision, the transversal network that aims to unite social and climate justice, and I liked it. The idea that there is a place that collects and connects is fundamental. The challenge is to try to rebuild a community not within a perimeter established by a party, but around social and environmental justice, minimum wages, gender equality. There is an idea of ​​the world behind these things and around them you can at least build a network, a common home, even among different people. The tug-of-war over the land registry is no more important than the environmental emergency, here in Latina Enea says we could end up under water, what about the land registry reform if the house ends up under water? Having a purely local look does not make sense. War, covid, climate emergency: how do we respond with national pride? “.

Yet local politics reserves these surprises: there are people, here and there in Italy, who would like to be heard, who sometimes get successes and who national politics ignores. The impression, after a good slice of pastiera, is that Valeria Campagna is one of them.