The privileged elites have undermined Brazil’s fragile democratic institutions, especially its judiciary, and took extraordinary and illegal measures to prevent Lula from running for president in October 2018 when all polls predicted his victory. On March 14, 2019, the AFL-CIO labor union confederation, with 12.7 million members in the USA and Canada, awarded its 2019 […]
The Bolsonaro government freezes funding for self-managed social housing construction, destroys the Ministry of Cities and tries to declare the housing movements as terrorists by Brian Mier* Approximately 7 million Brazilian families live in substandard housing, in shacks or simple brick houses that are often built in areas at risk of flooding or landslides that […]
The Unions and Social movements successfully blocked Michel Temer’s neoliberal pension reforms but new proposals by the Bolsonaro administration are even worse by Brian Mier In a period marked by destruction of most of Brazil’s labor rights and the first ever lowering of the minimum wage, one of the only glimmers of hope was the […]
Indigenous people and their supporters protest in 51 cities around the World against the neo-fascist Bolsonaro administration’s dismantling of reservations, cultural and land rights and his supporters’ genocidal threats. by Brian Mier January 31 was marked by protests for Brazilian Indigenous rights in cities across Brazil as people took to the streets to protest a […]
Why did the US left media bash a successful democratic socialist party during a right wing coup? by Brian Mier, Sean T. Mitchell, and Bryan Pitts On November 29, 2018, the socialist magazine and news site Jacobin co-sponsored a public interview with Fernando Haddad, the 2018 presidential candidate of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT). The former São Paulo mayor and […]
In a letter written to an international crowd of union and social movement activists and political leaders gathered in a São Bernardo do Campo union hall, Lula evokes the memory of Gandhi, Mandela and King, and says that despite setbacks happening around the world, the fight for human rights will continue. On December 10, the […]
Violence against social movements expected to increase across Brazil before Bolsonaro takes office On the night of Saturday (12/8), two activists from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) were assassinated inside the Dom José Maria Pires agrarian reform camp, in Alhandra County, Paraiba, around 45 km from João Pessoa. Witnesses say that the criminals entered […]
Brazil elected its new President on 28 October 2018 – the improbable, unspeakable fascist former army captain Jair Bolsonaro won against the affable unimpeachable democratic candidate of a left alliance led by the Workers’ Party (PT). Can a sophisticated young democracy, in the largest country in Latin America, commit suicide in front of our eyes? […]
by Gaía Passarelli. I never thought I’d get here. And sometimes I want to believe that it will not get worse. But then I pinch myself: I did not think Dilma would fall, I did not think Doria would be Mayor of São Paulo, I did not think Trump would be US President. I never […]
“Our weapon is our vote….We need to elect people who are committed to the working class, instead of their own individual interests or mediocre vanity,” says MST leader João Pedro Stedile by Eduardo Miranda The Landless Worker’s Movement (Movimento Sem Terra/MST), is the largest social movement in Latin America, with around 1.6 million members in […]