Elly Schlein’s run, from the Obama campaign to the top of the Democratic Party

ROME. A multicultural story that already bears its name: Elly Schlein, 37, arrives at the top of the Democratic Party after a political commitment that began in one of the darkest moments in the history of the party, namely the failed election of Romano Prodi to the presidency of the Republic, with now infamous “101” snipers who scuttled his ambitions.

The biography
Elena Ethel Schlein was born in 1985 in the canton of Ticino, in Switzerland, the daughter of two university professors: the father is an American political scientist descendant of an Askhenazite Jewish family from today’s Ukraine, the mother is a jurist, daughter of Agostino Viviani, lawyer anti-fascist, Sienese of the Pantera, and senator of the Socialist Party in the seventies. She has two older brothers, Benjamin who teaches mathematics at the University of Zurich and Susanna, a diplomat at the Athens embassy, ​​recently the victim of an anarchist attack. After graduating from Lugano she moved to her mother’s country of origin, in Bologna, where she studied first at the Dams, then in law where she graduated with a thesis on the representation of migrants in prison. Before dedicating yourself to active politics in Italy, you participated, as a volunteer, in the two campaigns that led to the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

The application
In 2014, after the experience of OccyupyPd following the failed election of Prodi and the commitment alongside Pippo Civati ​​in the congress, she ran as a candidate for the European Parliament, where, somewhat surprisingly, she was elected, mainly dealing with immigration, tax justice, the environment and the fight against mafias. She left the Democratic Party in the Renzian era, she was one of the founders of “Possible”. Her experience ended up crossing over with that of her challenger in the primaries, Stefano Bonaccini, in 2020 when, after the European experience, she ran for leadership of a list in her support of her which brought together various experiences of left.

Emilia
Due to the result obtained, she was appointed vice president of the Region, where she remained until 2022, when Enrico Letta called her to lead the opening of the Democratic Party lists to the progressive world, entering the Chamber. Your re-enrollment in the Democratic Party is quite recent: only in recent months have you in fact taken back your card at the Bolognina club, where the experience of OccupyPd and its climb to the European Parliament had in fact begun. She is very confidential about her private life, some of her have made about her in a television interview she said “she has loved many men and many women”. She has a partner who, she says, “she’s not a public figure and she doesn’t want to become one”. She is passionate about cinema, an assiduous visitor to the Locarno festival, she collaborated on a documentary that won the David di Donatello. She is also very passionate about music: she plays the guitar and is a fan of the Sanremo festival.