In this election period, many are asking us for guidance, or simply how we at the El Tamiso Cooperative think about it.
Given that there are many of us, and that single thinking is certainly not among our objectives, it seems appropriate to satisfy this curiosity, if only so as not to risk being identified ex officio with this or that other current, as a consequence of the point of view of those who would like to approve everything and everyone.
What is certain is that we, for 30 years now, in Padua have been successfully interpreting a business model in the name of sustainability: social, economic and environmental.
A model that we can hardly define as innovative, since it would seem normal to us the duty to apply employment contracts and pay taxes; to involve people in terms of motivation and commitment; to apply the cooperative and mutualistic method between agricultural enterprises; to transmit transparency and credibility to the “market” and finally to develop the practice of organic and biodynamic agriculture while respecting the environment, animals, people and the landscape.
In short, a corporate culture that also becomes a lifestyle as well as a source of economic livelihood for dozens of families engaged in our work, on farms as in all other phases of the activity.
Given again that first of all it is right to go and vote, it would be difficult today to give an indication of voting. On the other hand, it is easier for us to say what, in our opinion, we should not vote for:
• We must not vote for those who still think that there is no alternative to the growth of the neo-liberal and consumerist economic model that we are leaving behind; history teaches us that this can happen only after a violent elimination, generally a war; in fact, we know that because of our inextinguishable consumption and unlimited profits, wars exist in the world, all right; or what do we want to call the economic crisis of recent years, which is taking away rights and changing the rules of our civil coexistence? We must peacefully take back our future, simply by ceasing to be 'consumers' and becoming 'actors.'
• We should not vote for those who are convinced that we should continue to “privatize” services and collective goods, in a tragic logic in which administering public affairs must produce profits, under the illusion that this is synonymous with good administration — in this way, just to cite an example that concerns us, from an incinerator at the service of local waste management policies, we find an industrial plant with 3 blast furnaces, whose use is beyond the control of the local community
• It is not necessary to vote for those who have taken the habit of pretending nothing about the application of the referendum results; see the one on public water and/or the one on public funding to parties
• We should not vote for those who believe that large public works, but also private construction in general, are opportunities for economic revival of the territory, while we are seeing the real effects these days at the EXPO in Milan, the last of a long and infinite series of cases in which it counts how to divide contracts, certainly not efficiency — this is the era of maintenance, reorganization, reuse, production of real and primary goods, access to home, decoration and security; it's time to take back culture and identity
• You don't have to vote for those who talk nonsense about the fight against tax evasion, and then they take it out on those who pay them taxes, or go on the media catwalks looking for tax receipts...
• We must not vote out of decline in security with repression and exclusion, instead of with equal rights and obligations for everyone
• It is not necessary to vote For those who send the Zanicchi Ives and/or the current extras to Europe, without a shred of objective and strategy for the European Union to finally become a community of peoples and not of banks and multinational lobbies
• We should not vote for those who pretend not to see, or do not see at all, that we have reduced agriculture and the average Italian farmer to the role of beggar for community contributions, taking away the dignity of businesses, which instead of having the maximum role in the defense of the territory become distribution terminals of multinational chemical companies and predestined victims of international “free trade” treaties — agriculture is not a problem of a few farmers, but the primary interest of the Collectivity
• It is not necessary to vote for those who snub the effects and the centrality of issues such as the introduction on the market and production of transgenic GMO products, the patenting and commercial control of seeds, the use of pesticides and highly toxic herbicides, in agriculture and in the management of public spaces — in this region they are all champions, just don't touch the environmental and health impact of Prosecco, the devastation of productions destined for biogas, the silent speculations on land destined for areas of lamination, etc. etc.
• We must not vote for those who deny that in this country, between parties, press and communication, large entrepreneurship, financial powers, unions and various corporations, a stopper has been created that prevents our young people from “dreaming” and realizing their dreams - this is unforgivable - my generation, the one in which you were young in the 70s, despite everything could and wanted to dream, and without vainglory I think that what is good still around derives from that time and from those opportunities to feel like interpreters of their future.
Dear fellow citizens, supporters, partners, collaborators, friends, many could be added... even the very simple consideration that exists for local elections the possibility of disjoint voting, which still allows the person to vote, rather than the party.
Franco Zecchinato — president of the El Tamiso Cooperative
