Mario Calabresi talks about listening and possibilities in Milan, but does not announce his candidacy for mayor

Those who expected Mario Calabresi to announce his candidacy for mayor of Milan today, at the presentation of his book 'Rise at dawn', were disappointed but not too much. Because by talking about effort and listening (the latter is the theme of his future volume to be released on September 22) he has somehow outlined the seed of what his political program and his electoral campaign could be.

"We are all, I am, respectfully awaiting what will be" he said, ensuring respect "for the times of politics" which must decide whether and how to hold the centre-left primaries.

And "while waiting to understand what happens, I took a step" he added, referring to his resignation from all positions in Chora, the publishing company that deals with podcasts of which he is one of the founders because "I wanted to do things well". "I made a big leap because I'm now unemployed," he joked.

Unemployed but with his hands free to "listen, understand" and meet those he believes. And it is precisely a listening journey that he has undertaken, "astonished" by the reactions of politicians to his resignation but also, positively, by those of the many "people who when I walk feel the need to stop me and tell me something".

"Milan - he explained - has become the city of skyscrapers but I don't think the skyscrapers are the problem, I think the problem is if we don't look at street level". "I believe that what is most beautiful today is listening to people's needs" without idealizing the past and looking forward.

From the defense of the Paravia primary school, which he attended and now "out of 106 children, only one has both Italian parents, and it is portrayed as an impossible school but it is a place of commitment with extraordinary teachers" to the need "for spaces of free sociality" such as Cassina Anna, the complex on the northern outskirts of the city where the meeting took place, from a quote from Aldo Moro to one from Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, who restored Leonardo's Last Supper for 20 years, the former director of Repubblica e Stampa spoke about the needs of what for him "is the city of possibilities". For this reason, he claimed, he chose it, insisting with the Roman partners, as the Chora headquarters "where 130 people now work".

“I love that Milan is still the city of possibilities, where things can happen,” he said. While what he doesn't like is "the heat of this summer. I don't like that it's the city of struggling to breathe, in summer as well as in winter, which needs green spaces". And for politics, in general, there is another important theme "the long view" and care. "The daily life of Italian citizens is measured by train delays, not by the bridge over the Strait. The topic of care, of the maintenance of a state, of a city, of infrastructures, of a hospital is apparently not sexy but it is what makes the difference in people's lives". Words that, perhaps, a mayor would say.