Turin is one of the historic fortresses of Italian labor. The industrial city on the edge of the Alps was the center of totemic struggles like the factory occupations of 1919–20, the workers’ first strikes against Fascism in 1943 and the new wave of shopfloor militancy in the 1960s. The city is also deeply connected to the history of the Left: it was the birthplace of Antonio Gramsci’s l’Ordine Nuovo newspaper and was a red heartland throughout postwar history, with a Communist-controlled city hall through much of the 1970s and ’80s.

But today, Turin has changed: the famous FIAT autoworks at Mirafiori today employs only a few thousand workers (down from as many as one hundred thousand), and the workforce has been hit by deindustrialization and the offensive against hard-won labor rights. The liberalized left has also grown apart from its own historic base: in the 2016 city hall elections, it was the eclectic Five Star Movement and its candidate Chiara Appendino who swept to victory, piling up large majorities in once solidly Communist districts.

The scandal-hit Appendino will not be running again in this fall’s mayoral elections: but one candidate who has already put his name in the ring is historian Angelo D’Orsi. Well-known in Italy as a biographer of Antonio Gramsci, he is leading a united-left list, aimed at mobilizing voters who have for too long been overlooked. D’Orsi spoke to Jacobin‘s David Broder about why he’s running, the changing face of Turin, and why we shouldn’t swallow the notion that the working class has disappeared.