“The fact that I am a black woman and influence other people to demand their constitutional rights is outrageous to them. Who is going to accept that? They certainly are not. They chose the role I am supposed to play: doing dishes, cooking food. And that’s not my role.” Brazil’s 1988 Constitution has some of […]
500 days after the socialist city councilwoman’s assassination, the people who ordered her killing are still at large On Saturday, July 27th, Congressman Marcelo Freixo (PSOL-Rio de Janeiro) published a video of city councilwoman Marielle Franco in Pedra do Sal, downtown Rio, in 2017, on her 38th birthday. The socialist lawmaker would have turned 40 […]
Born in Venda Nova district of Belo Horizonte, Andreia de Jesus, is a lawyer, educator, public employee and a State Representative for PSOL. Patrick Foley, Brazil Solidarity Initiative: Thank you for giving us your time and speaking with the Brazil Solidarity Initiative. Our initiative is committed to standing shoulder to shoulder with Brazilians defending social […]
New data shows homicides increased during coup year of 2016. Most victims were Afro-Brazilian males. By Brian Mier Wednesday, June 6 marked the release of the most comprehensive annual study of national and state level homicide data in Brazil, the 2018 Atlas da Violencia, conducted by 12 researchers from the federal government’s Applied Economic Research Institute […]
On March 14th in the Estácio area of Rio de Janeiro, Councilwoman Marielle Franco of the Socialism & Freedom Party (PSOL) was executed with 5 shots to the head. Her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, also died in the attack. Some witnesses say that they could not hear the shots, indicating that the excecution was committed with […]
Djamila Ribeiro, 37, is currently one of the most popular writers and public figures in the Afro-Brazilian woman’s rights movement. She was born into a working class family in the gritty port city of Santos to communist parents. Her father was active in the local longshoreman’s union and used to take her to the Soviet […]
In 2006, Globo TV’s senior news editor Ali Kamel wrote a book called “We are not racists“, in which he argued that, despite all the statistics that prove otherwise, there is no structural racism in Brazil. The book was widely criticised, as detailed in this paper by Daniele de Oliveira of UFBA. Kamel later sued […]
Update 7/10/17: The Campaign has issued a response to the person responsible for Bolsonaro’s invitation Dr. Mark Langevin, a specialist on US-Brazil energy relations and security, who had defended the move. Read the response here. On October 13, 2017, Jair Bolsonaro, who Glenn Greenwald called the World’s most hateful, misogynistic, elected official, is scheduled to […]
UPDATE 3/10/17: Jair Bolsonaro has been prosecuted and fined R$50,000 for his racial slur against Quilombola communities. A campaign has been launched to urge George Washington University to cancel Bolsonaro’s scheduled appearance. On Monday the Clube Hebráica of Rio de Janeiro, a social and sports club for members of Rio’s Jewish community, hosted a speech […]
By Patricia Azevedo Boyd In Brazil, racial issues are complex and contentious but very important to talk about. The tendency has been to pretend that problems do not exist, and many Brazilians show extraordinary insensitivity and ignorance about the subject. Brazil was one of the last countries to abolish slavery and has a long way […]