Aboubakar Soumahoro

Activist and Trade Unionist, Rome

«Every time I wake up I dream of seeing people no longer consumed among the thousand trickles of misery and invisibility».

What motivates you every day in your profession?

Stand up for your rights, that's my principle. I get up every day with a feeling of deep empathy, rooted in the dimension of a spirituality that wants to be revolutionary to give a smile to all those who have been denied a smile. And to make those who keep smiling understand that that smile must be shared in society – it is a world of collective happiness. It's not about making someone cry, it's about making everyone smile. This means facing without ever turning our backs on situations of inequality, without ever turning in front of those who suffer but also feeling the immaterial sufferings that the eye does not see. We must have the opportunity to tune in to the heartbeat of their heart and find what is in the bottom and try to restore the sun ray of the smile, which is both inner and external. Every day, when I get out of bed, that's what breathes and beats inside me. I am convinced that in order to carry out this mission of life, we must channel our initiatives into a collective dimension. You don't need lone heroes. 

Tell me about a memory that was important in your path as an activist and trade unionist.

When I found myself in front of the mother and wife and 5-year-old daughter of Soumaila Sacko [a Mali labourer killed in 2018 by Antonio Pontoriero, ed]. I took his body to his village. That 5-year-old girl dreamed and wanted to have her father close to her and we brought him his body after someone shot him. It was a moment that shocked me and marked me and they are memories that I will take with me all my life. 

What would you say to yourself when you were 13?

I would tell him to dream, to cultivate curiosity and imagination. And every day try to turn that desire into reality.

And in your industry what changes do you hope to see in the next 5-10 years?

Every time I wake up I dream of seeing people no longer consumed among the thousand trickles of misery and invisibility. I would like to stop seeing people who have been led to be ashamed of their misery, impoverishment and invisibility. There are apparently well-adjusted people who are sucked into poverty and precariousness and who today live in dramatic situations. A system that creates this shame is a system that must not survive for the next five years. Our every action must lead to a change in this. Change must be now, it is in our daily actions, in our gaze and in our actions. We must be critical and proactive. When there is generosity instead of greed, instead of individualism a collective dimension, it will mean that we are building a new dimension, a different system that puts the economy at the service of the person. That is why we founded the Community of the Invisibles on the Move, which is an area in which to help all the invisible and the suffering to move us all towards an area that is community, solidarity, social justice but above all reciprocity, enhancing its beauty.