Ines Schwerdtner
We had a “preelection campaign” planned, where we wanted to knock on 100,000 doors. Obviously [with the election now brought forward] we’ve now cut the “pre-“ bit, and we’re already in the campaign. But I think we are paradoxically one of the most prepared parties now, because we already have 150 Die Linke groups who started campaigning even before the election season officially began.
More than two thousand people have joined our party since the fall of the government last week.
We wanted to knock on 100,000 doors so we could listen to people and get our main proposals for the election from them directly. What we heard — which is no surprise — after the first couple thousand talks, is that most people in the cities talk about rent. I think it gives us more legitimacy to say, OK, well, what we want in this election campaign is a federal rent cap, because it’s what people need most. The Social Democrats have completely failed on the cost-of-living crisis, on heating and building new homes. Rents have been rising for years now, not just in the main cities.
More than two thousand people have joined our party since the fall of the government last week. We have all these new members asking themselves, what can we do? I think it’s best to get them in contact with the people that we want to convince of left-wing politics, but also that we get the material that we talk about directly from the people we seek to represent. We’ll have to experiment with this type of dialogue. Now we have to get the campaign up and running even faster. So, after ten thousand talks, we’ll need to analyze them. And I hope that in two weeks we will have a program that takes into account what people have told us on the doorstep.
Auteur: Ines Schwerdtner
