With the aim of “strengthening bilateral relations” between the governments of Spain and the US, but also of “expanding progressive alliances on both sides of the Atlantic”, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, plans to travel next Wednesday to the USA, where he will maintain a tight schedule until Friday, before returning to Madrid. In addition to the institutional objective, the trip aims to widen Díaz’s international ties just ten days after Sumar’s start, the listening process after which he will decide if he is the candidate of the political space that is located to the left of the PSOE for the general elections of 2023.
On the 8th, at the association’s presentation ceremony, before more than 5,000 people, Díaz assured that with the listening –which will last for six months, with events throughout Spain– one of its objectives is for civil society to develop ” a new social contract” that outlines a country project for the next ten years but, in addition, “expands” and brings democracy to the economy as well. On the first day of her trip to the US, the vice president will meet precisely with one of the main defenders of that theory, the highest representative of the American left, independent senator Bernie Sanders.
He claims to “stand up” to Wall Street to “recover the working class” or “recover power” now “in the hands of the billionaires” for the citizenry”. In addition, his speech has been characterized by demanding more taxes for the rich All these theses fully coincide with the thought of Díaz who, last week, as soon as he learned of the proposal of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to create new taxes on banks and large electricity companies, celebrated the step and considered that the Executive of which he is a part, recovered his “course”, although he demanded, like Sanders, new taxes for the richest.
It will be as soon as she lands on US soil, on Wednesday, in Washington, when the Minister of Labor will meet with the person who was also a candidate for the Democratic primaries in 2016 and 2020. The end of the meeting, according to the environment of the vice president, is ” strengthen progressive coalitions in a context of global uncertainty and climate crisis”. Sanders has also been characterized by defending the universality and free nature of both education and health in a country, the USA, in which the private sector and the ultra-liberal economy predominate. The reinforcement of public health and education is also one of the great pillars of Yolanda Díaz’s speech.
In Washington, the vice president will meet with other leaders of North American progressivism, such as Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and will meet with her counterpart, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, with whom she has already held two videoconference meetings in recent years. She will sign a Declaration of Intent with him to expand collaboration between Spain and the US in trade union matters, platform work and protection of LGTBQ + workers.
Díaz will also get to know first-hand the emerging American trade unionism, such as that represented by the co-founder of the organization of the workers of the giant Amazon, Amazon Labor Union, Derrick Palmer, and those of Apple, Starbucks or the riders. In the first act of Sumar, in Madrid, one of the representatives of civil society that Díaz listened to was precisely Miguel Ángel Castellano, representative of the struggle of Amazon workers in Spain, who denounced the precariousness of his work in the aforementioned multinational.
Feminism is another of the mainstays of Díaz’s project that will be black on white within a year, in the new “social contract” that will be drawn up by different social groups. In order to strengthen ties with US feminists, the vice president will also meet during her trip to the US with Deborah Archer, president of the ACLU, the historic civil rights defense organization that is leading the protests against the setback in sexual and reproductive rights throughout the country after the repeal of the right to abortion by the US Supreme Court.
The trip will also serve to test the leadership capacity of the vice president also at an international level. After working in Washington, Díaz will travel to New York, where she has a full agenda. Ella Díaz will be “the hostess” there, she explains her team, in an act at the UN headquarters to which she has summoned ministers from numerous countries to promote what will be the first resolution on the Social Economy in the United Nations United. And she will meet with the UN Deputy Secretary General, Aminah Mohammed, António Guterres’s number two.
The also head of Labor will resume Sumar as soon as she returns to Spain, with the marked objective of putting an end to the “disaffection” of the left-wing electorate. To do this, she has set a one-year deadline, although it will be earlier, at the end of 2022, when, once the listening process is over, she will publish her decision to be a Moncloa candidate or not. Díaz’s team explains that during this process new trips such as this week’s to the US cannot be ruled out, because the vice president also wants to listen to the main exponents of progressivism and the left around the world.
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