Aboubakar Soumahoro, the left-wing deputy in the Chamber with work boots

With his entry into Parliament, Côte d’Ivoire-born trade unionist Aboubakar Soumahoro is not alone. With him also enter the people he met, defended and told over the years, as a representative of the exploited and underpaid workers in Italy in the agricultural sector. Symbolically, the politician put on his work boots, still covered in dirt.

Soumahoro said: «I go to Parliament wearing these boots of mine that I have always worn to fight in the slums of humanity, together with my companions and my companions, against exploitation and precariousness.

I wear these boots in memory of the many and many comrades who did not survive this fight of ours (such as Soumaila Sacko, Joof Yusupha, Fallaye Dabo) and in memory of the many workers and workers who died from work (such as Paola Clemente, Luana D’Orazio , Giuliano De Seta, Lorenzo Parelli).

I wear these boots in honor of those who are struggling to make ends meet today and those who are discriminated against. These boots are the symbol of the sufferings and the hope of the Royal Country which enters Parliament today with me to legislate. This new path as a Deputy only makes sense if it is a path shared by those who, like me, know what it means to be discriminated against, to suffer from hunger or to have their shoes dirty with the mud and sweat of precarious and underpaid work.

Our posture will always be with our feet firmly in the mud of reality and the spirit turned towards the sky of hope ».

The deputy, on the day of the inauguration of the new legislature. he declared what his intentions will be as a member of the minority: «It will be a determined, firm opposition, anchored to the values ​​of our constitutional charter. In 22 years in this country I have never known the godsend, I have worked in the fields, I know what it means to suffer, not being able to eat, and like me many other people and we will try to make people feel this ». From the Montecitorio square, Soumahoro added: “I want to be remembered among the people who have tried to make it clear that we are all human beings and that the real monstrosity is that of naval blockades.”

Soumahoro, 42, was born in 1980 in Bétroulilié in the Ivory Coast. He arrived in our country at 19. In 2010 he graduated in Sociology from the University of Naples “Federico II” University with a grade of 110/110 with a thesis entitled: “Social analysis of the labor market. The condition of migrant workers in the Italian labor market: persistence and changes ”.

For ten years Soumahoro has been fighting for the rights of workers and migrants: he is one of the founding members of the International Coalition Sans-Papiers, Migrants and Refugees (Cispm), with which in 2012 he organized a march of the sans-papiers who crossed six countries undocumented Europeans to ask for the free movement of people as is already the case for goods.

He was also a trade unionist in the Agricultural Coordination of the Basic Union Union (Usb), dealing above all with the protection of the rights of laborers, the fight against illegal hiring and exploitation along the agricultural supply chain. After the killing of Soumaila Sacko (laborer and unionist of the Usb assassinated in Calabria on 2 June 2018, while he was collecting metal sheets to build a makeshift shack), he requested and obtained from the Conte I government the creation of the operative table to combat the hiring and exploitation in agriculture. The Table was officially established with the decree of 4 July 2019 published in the Official Gazette of the Italian Republic on 3 September 2019 and sees the participation, in addition to the Minister of Labor and Social Policies who chairs it, also of the Ministry of the Interior, of the Ministry of Agricultural Policies, the Ministry for the South and Territorial Cohesion, the Regions, all the trade unions and various other actors.

Soumahoro has written extensively on issues related to under-wage work and illegal hiring: in 2019 he published the book Humanity in Revolt: Our Struggle for Work and the Right to Happiness. He is also a columnist with the First human beings column, published in the weekly L’Espresso and has a personal blog on HuffPost, in which he mainly deals with issues connected with the conditions of foreign workers in Italy.

In the political elections of 2022, Green Europe offers Soumahoro an independent candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies as part of the Green and Left Alliance list. Soumahoro was a candidate in the Modena single-member constituency for the center-left, in which he lost to the center-right candidate Daniela Dondi by about 3,000 votes. Thanks to further candidates as leaders of the Green and Left Alliance in the multi-member constituencies Veneto 1 – 01, Emilia Romagna 02, Puglia 02 and Lombardia 1 – 01, he was eventually elected, winning in the last three constituencies and, based on the electoral law Rosato, being assigned to the college of Lombardy.