European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Their dreams were also mine.

We wanted a few simple things:

a job, a chance to support our families properly, the right to send our children to school,

to live in a democratic society, maintain our individual values and at the same time defend the rights of the community.

So as soon as I started working for the party, I set up women sections, even if I wasn’t particularly skilled.

Women were all coming from the same background I came from.

We had to discuss together about our own issues, learn to vote, identify our problems and develop our demands.

If we discussed with men, women would not speak out.

Having a women-only group allowed us to develop those issues and build up our claims.

After the war there was dramatic poverty. The children were on the street.

The first thing I recommended was to set up a nursery school. We had one, but it was too small for all the children.

In Bainsizza street, with all the working-class housing, a multitude of kids spent the whole day on the streets waiting for their mother to come back from work.

They ate only at breakfast and dinner, hardly at lunch. Their families didn’t have enough money for another meal.

We wanted to talk to them, grant them some security and possibly feed them.

The Communist Party offered us one of their offices, a small apartment in the working-class area,

so we started discussing on how to set it up.

The campaign for nurseries was the first major issue

together with the right to vote for women and equal payment ecc.