Maíllo calls to change the mood of a “cowarded left”: “We go on the offensive”

“Comrades, the joy begins.” It is the declaration of intentions with which the leader of Izquierda Unida, Antonio Maíllo, presented this Saturday the Call for Democracy, a political process that will end in spring and with which the party wants to take back the initiative and create a popular alliance that challenge the different sectors of society, environmentalism, feminism, social movements. Maíllo has asked to take advantage of this process to change the mood of a “shocked” and “cowarded” left. “We are going on the offensive,” he said.

“We are about to change the mood. I challenge you to do it, to go out to the territories to transmit this initiative, which is an ideological embrace,” Maíllo encouraged at the inauguration of this political process, at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, at the halfway point of a day of conferences on the care economy or the right to housing in which figures such as the former leader of Podemos and CAES lawyer, Alejandra Jacinto, and the former MEP have participated. of Unidas Podemos María Eugenia Rodríguez Palop.

People from social movements such as Erik Guerrero, from Frente Migrante, Alberto Coronel, from Rebelión Cientifica, Jorge Riechmann, environmental activist and professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid or Carlos Gutiérrez, from Comisiones Obreras, have also participated, an overview of the sectors to which that IU wants to challenge with this call.

Maíllo, in that central rally, has appealed several times to recover joy. “They can’t take it away from us because then they defeat us,” he said. And he has described this Call for Democracy as a turning point for that “left in shock or cowed.” “The left does not have to dedicate itself to interpreting others but rather to calling on other people to join our project,” he claimed. “Call people to join this ambitious, open and participatory project,” he insisted.

This political process is one of the first ideas that Maíllo launched when he arrived at the IU leadership last May, in a context marked by the decline of the Sumar hypothesis as a broad front driven by the project of the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz. , the coalition was burdened by a series of electoral processes that did not give the expected results.

The IU leader has since criticized the undemocratic ways in which some decisions had been made in the construction of that front and proposed a new, much more horizontal way of doing things. Within this framework, the party has tried to regain the initiative since then and this forum is one more step on that path.

“Our commitment is to all those people who fight for their rights and for the rights of those who will come. This Call is committed to an inclusive alliance, which adds the voices of feminism, environmentalism and each social movement, because only with a broad popular alliance can we build a just society,” reads the manifesto that inaugurates this political process.

An alliance that also challenges other political formations, civil society and, he said, those who “have moved away” in recent years in which the transformative left has lost numerous supports since the highest point almost ten years ago. United We Can. “This Call was born from our militancy, but it is projected towards all the people who feel the need to participate, to mobilize and to build a different future. For this reason, we call on all those people committed to the society in which we live, the people who suffer injustice and those who suffer the injustices of others as if they were their own,” the manifesto maintains.

To build an “alternative,” Maíllo said, “it is not enough to raise the scarecrow that the right and the extreme right come from.” “IU raises this social proposal of the Call for Democracy not only to stop the extreme right but to be aware that they are being stopped by building a project for an alternative country. With more democracy,” he maintained.

This project, according to the manifesto, is based on pillars such as the “distribution of work, time and care”, “universal and strong public services”, the “right to housing”, “strategic resources at the service of all and all”, “the State for dignity and equality” or Spain as a “host country”.

“Today we launch this Call for Democracy, a long-term process in which participation and collective construction will be our guide. We invite those who feel challenged by our proposal to be part of this process of struggle, construction, joy and hope. This is just the beginning, we will write the end together,” the manifesto summarizes.

“This call is born from our militancy but is projected to those who want a different future,” stated Maíllo, who has asked that the manifesto be spread throughout all the towns and cities of the State. “We will finish in spring because even if there are gray days, spring always comes,” he concluded.