Protests Expand in Brazil, Fueled by Video of Police Brutality
18/06/2013 24 comentarios
As my colleague Simon Romero reports from São Paulo, more than 200,000 Brazilians filled the streets in cities across the country on Monday to protest high cost of living and lavish spending on soccer stadiums ahead of next year’s World Cup. The Demonstrations have intensified as images of police brutality against peaceful protesters spread on social networks. While the dynamic of heavy-handed police tactics, like the use of pepper spray, tear gas and the rubber bullets on protesters echoes recent events in Turkey, not to mention those in the Unites States, Spain, Syria, Libya, Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, one difference is that some of the images of the police crackdown in Brazil that stirred the most anger were captured by the reporters for local newspapers and television stations, not just protesters or foreign correspondents. One striking account of the violence used on protesters last week in Brazil’s largest city, captured in a video viewed more than a million times on YouTube was narrated by Giuliana Vallone, a reporter for the Web site of the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, who was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet at point-blank range by one of the police “shock troops” deployed against the protesters. The same newspaper posted the remarkable aerial views of Monday’s night’s protest in São Paulo on its YouTube channel. (Folha’s video journalists also produced excellent video report on protests in Turkey, with testimonies in English from the victims of police brutality there. Brazilian reporters covering the protests in Istanbul have also highlighted the fact that the tear gas used in Turkey is manufactured in Brazil.) Other images of the violent crackdown on peaceful protesters were shot on the phones and cameras of bystanders or demonstrators. One clip posted on YouTube by a blogger named José Almuiña, showing the sudden use of force against protesters kneeling in a street near recently renovated Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, has already been viewed more than 450,000 times. That attack, by the officers from the Batalhão de Choque on protesters singing the national anthem and waving Brazilian flags, came as the stadium hosted a match in the Confederations Cup, a dress rehearsal for next year’s World Cup. Similarly heavy-handed tactics were used against protesters who gathered outside the new national stadium in Brasilía before the opening match of the Confederations Cup on Saturday. Video of police officers using force against seated, placard-waving protesters, one read, “Saímos do Facebook,” or “We Left Facebook,” a reference to the fact protests were organized online, was captured by onlookers and posted on YouTube and Vimeo (…..)
Acerca de ignaciocovelo
CORREDOR BIOCEANICO 
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Despite being winter, the air in Brazil smells Spring. Like the youth in Tunis, Cairo and Istanbul, the (courageous) Brazilian youth took the streets to demand basic rights. That is, a (reasonable) clean and effective government.They get neither. The increase in transportation fare was just a catalyst for street demonstrations. Brazilians pay Swedish taxes (37%/GDP compared to 27%/US) and get public education, transport and health care of Somalia. The Workers Party –in power for the first time since 2003– became corrupt as other conservative parties. Not a single politician has ever faced jail term for stealing public money. Public works for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games are unfinished, presenting shoddy workmanship and costs out of control. Taxpayers may end up paying the equivalent paid by construction of the capital Brasilia in the 60s. The financing of Brasilia led to decades of unsustainable public spending and hyperinflation. Today’s Brazilian middle class urban youth are better informed and more travelled than previous ones. They know their education level is well below their overseas peers. Worst, the educational gap is widening not shortening. Civil service is the only decent job available for the majority of university graduates. Mistakes in monetary and fiscal policy compound the social and political problems. The economy is stagnated, inflation is going up and higher unemployment will soon follow. Spring is just beginning in Brazil.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/protests-expand-in-brazil-fueled-by-video-of-police-brutality/
Political leaders here in Brazil’s largest city braced for yet another round of demonstrations on Tuesday night by an increasingly powerful movement that has grown from complaints about bus fares to a broad challenge to political corruption, lavish stadium projects, the cost of living and substandard public services. The mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, met on Tuesday morning with representatives of the protest movement, but warned that it would not be possible to revoke the increase in bus fares, citing budget restraints. In the nation’s capital, Brasília, officials seemed to be grasping for ways to engage the movement, whose protests rank among the largest and most resonant since the nation’s military dictatorship ended in 1985. “These voices, which go beyond traditional mechanisms, political parties and the media itself, need to be heard,” President Dilma Rousseff said in a speech on Tuesday morning. Ms. Rousseff, who has been the target of pointed criticism by some protesters, said that Brazil “awoke stronger” after the protests on Monday night: “The greatness of yesterday’s demonstrations were proof of the energy of our democracy.” Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to Ms. Rousseff, said that the authorities were hoping to establish a dialogue to respond to a widening movement that seems to have caught them by surprise. “It would be a presumption to think that we understand what is happening,” he said before senators on Tuesday morning. “We need to be aware of the complexity of what is occurring.” Protesters showed up by the thousands in Brazil’s largest cities on Monday night in a remarkable display of strength for an agitation that had begun with small protests over bus fares. Demonstrators numbering into the tens of thousands gathered here in São Paulo, and other large protests unfolded in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Curitiba, Belém and Brasília, the capital, where marchers made their way to the roof of Congress (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/americas/brazilian-leaders-brace-for-more-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: The (courageous) Brazilian middle class youth is fighting for the same cause as their counterparts did in Tunis, Cairo and Istanbul. A reasonable honest and effective government. Since the country became a republic in 1889, Brazilians got neither. The ruling Workers Party of Pres Dilma Rousseff since 2003 is showing the same DNA traits of traditional parties. That is, incompetent in delivering services and highly corrupt. Not a single politician has ever served prison term for stealing public money. Brazilians get the worst political deal in the Western Hemisphere. They pay Scandinavian taxes (37%/GDP) and get public education, transportation and health care of Somalia. Tomorrow my daughter will be marching with her university classmates in the streets of Florianopolis, capital of Santa Catarina. I am proud of her.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/americas/brazilian-leaders-brace-for-more-protests.html
Heverton: Protests in my country, are a reflection of a corrupt political, stealing people’s money. Brazil is not only the country of football, carnival and beautiful women. There are humans here! However the government of that country has forgotten that. Do not have adequate health, education, housing. sanitation and our minimum wage is only $ 300! What a shame! The government spends billions to build stadiums and millions of people die for lack of decent hospital care. While we do a party for english see our people suffer. We need change! No more violence, no more corruption, no more Dilma! I do not know if anyone out there in the United States will see this comment, but this week a 20 year old was robbed, shot and paralyzed. This in a town in the interior of São Paulo. But you know what’s worse? This occurs every day in the country. Want some advice? Do not come back here. It’s dangerous. But Brazil will change! Here some 10 years ago, different oped a comment on my part! There is a Hope!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/americas/brazilian-leaders-brace-for-more-protests.html
Maya: Dilma is not the inventor of corruption. Brazilian society is all about corruption. All the pass governments had corruption scandals and we see corruption everyday, everywhere in Brazil. My state was and is governed by DEM and PMBD and they all been stilling money from our people. People that still dies with no water and no food. So PT is not the worst of the parties, they all have bad people. Here is the country of «jeitinho brasileiro» and population is proud of that. How many people do you know that became rich all of sudden not from hard work? How many times I’ve seen people using fake id’s to receive «bolsa familia», people that already have cars and houses? They just want a little more, right? Politicians have been helped all these years by construction entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, police, marketing people. They ALL still from the people. So, ok, let’s ask for better politicians, but lets watch ourselves. Because a corrupt society cannot have a clean government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/americas/brazilian-leaders-brace-for-more-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/americas/brazilian-leaders-brace-for-more-protests.html
(NYT GOLDEN PICK) Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Returning to Brazil after 30 years overseas, I visited my mother at my hometown Sao Goncalo in the state of MG. There, I met a former school colleague that became a politician and, of course, a wealthy person. During a friendly chat with beer going around, I asked why he decided to go into politics. His candid answer was a classical Willy Sutton: That’s where the money is. Since 1889, Brazil has been ruled by a kleptocracy of wealthy families with a juridical system rigged to guarantee impunity. Many thought this could change when the Workers Party/PT, led by former pres Lula, came to power in 2003. For the first time, a party with people of humble origin acceded to power. However, PT adapted rapidly to the status quo of the old cleptocracy. Not a single corrupt politician has done jail time in Brazil’s history. The political system explains why young people are going into the streets. Brazilians pay more taxes than Americans (37%/GDP versus 27% US. In return, they get public services of transportation, health, education and personal security of Somalia. Being host to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic games was a gambit by Pres Lula that he may be regretting. Instead of displaying the prowess of the Brazilian economy, it will show the weaknesses of the political system, buried in corruption and highly inept in modernizing the economy and improving the welfare and personal security of the population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Juliana: I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with the Protests … I’m tired of the corruption, of this government, but I don’t think those Protest will solve anything. People are fighting for different interests, there’s no unit, no common goal. In the beginning everything was about our transports, but some people start saying that 20 cents wasn’t worth the effort and then they found other things to fight about. Now, nobody knows what it is about! What if the mayor gives up of the 20 cents raise? Seems like everybody will stop fighting, but that’s ages from being our biggest problem… How, in the middle of theses, are there people approving our president and disapproving our healthcare, our schools, our Congress…? I hope things get better, but I don’t know if we are really awake for the real problem!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Juliana, something is deeply wrong with a government spending billions of dollars in useless stadiums while people travel as cattle in (expensive) public transport, public schools don’t teach anything and people are constantly in fear of crime. Lula used to say that Brazil is the best country in the world AFTER he became president. Everyone understands that. Politics is the surest way to become rich and famous in Brazil. Besides, no downside of doing jail time for stealing public money. In sum, THE main problem in Brazil is the political system. Democracy is only a subterfuge for politicians to steal public money and live a wonderful life. The only difference is a candidate today from a poor family has good chances to be elected for office as a candidate from a wealthy family.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
In April, in the sunlit city of Natal, Brazil, two men knocked on Sandra Abdalla’s door to apply for a painting job. Their pitch, as she described it in an e-mail: they were evangelical Christians and therefore more reliable than the competition. They didn’t drink, raise hell or steal, as a Catholic might. In a country that boasts the largest Roman Catholic population in the world — and a quickly rising tide of evangelicals — those are fighting words. Not least to Pope Francis, an Argentine who will visit Brazil next month, in the first trip of his papacy. The new pontiff represents many beginnings: first Latin American, first Jesuit, first to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi, first to hail from the Southern Hemisphere, first non-European in 1,272 years. His election represents a clear shift in Catholicism’s center of gravity away from Europe: almost 40 percent of Catholics today live in Latin America and the Caribbean (about 28 percent are in Asia or Africa); in 1910, 65 percent were European. The choice also signals a church in fighting mode. As the late Rev. Edward L. Cleary, an American specialist in Latin American politics, put it, “the future of the Catholic Church lies south of the border.” It is counting on Latin America to save its soul. For 500 years since the cross was planted in the Western Hemisphere — since the first American priest received his holy orders — the Latin American church has been defined by race and class. Bartolomé de las Casas, the first priest to be ordained in the New World, around 1513, and the first to denounce the oppression of indigenous Americans, turned the theology upside down. Instead of the top-down, rigid hierarchy practiced in Rome, he wanted a grass-roots perspective. The Jesuits, self-proclaimed “soldiers of God,” agreed. For the next 260 years, they often aligned with the continent’s Indians and, as a result, were booted out by Pope Clement XIV, in 1773. Two centuries later, in the 1960s, as Communism made inroads, Latin American priests rode the winds of the Second Vatican Council to focus anew on poverty and social justice. A full-fledged “liberation theology” followed and, for preaching it, many were excommunicated, some by Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, who retired in February (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/arana-preparing-for-the-pope.html
(NYT GOLDEN PICK) Professor Uziel Nogueira says: No doubt, the election of an Argentinian jesuit as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church has energized the faithful and hope of change for the non faithful. Pope Francis I will soon come to Brazil for a world youth congress. He comes to the right place at the right time. The South American country has the largest catholic population in the world. The Brazilian youth is taking to the streets against a corrupt political system supported historically by the church. In Brazil, the church has two faces. Priests talk against political corruption in their sunday sermons. At the same time, the church leadership supports the ruling political class and gets financial benefits in return. Perhaps, as the cousin of the author says «Latin Americans may now end up evangelizing Europe as avidly as it once evangelized us.” The only impediment is that advanced and prosperous Europe turned to protestantism a few centuries ago. Spain and Portugal , birthplaces of catholicism in Latin America, became prosperous only after joining the EU, led by Germany. For many observers, the backwardness of Latin America is caused partly by the Catholic Church. In this respect, the church may be the problem and not the solution for the political problems affecting the future of the Brazilian youth today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/arana-preparing-for-the-pope.html
The protests were heating up on the streets of Brazil’s largest city last week, but the mayor was not in his office. He was not even in the city. He had left for Paris to try to land the 2020 World’s Fair — exactly the kind of expensive, international mega-event that demonstrators nationwide have scorned. A week later, the mayor, Fernando Haddad, 50, was holed up in his apartment as scores of protesters rallied outside and others smashed the windows of his office building, furious that he had refused to meet with them, much less yield to their demand to revoke a contentious bus fare increase. How such a rising star in the leftist governing party, someone whose name is often mentioned as a future presidential contender, so badly misread the national mood reflects the disconnect between a growing segment of the population and a government that prides itself on popular policies aimed at lifting millions out of poverty. After rising to prominence on the backs of huge protests to usher in democratic leadership, the governing Workers Party now finds itself perplexed by the revolt in its midst, watching with dismay as political corruption, bad public services and the government’s focus on lifting Brazil’s international stature through events like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics inspire outrage (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: The ruling Workers Party (PT), in power since 2003, is dumbfounded by the youth taking up the streets. After all PT, led by charismatic former pres Lula, was the first opposition party to come to power and lift 50 million Brazilians out of abject poverty. Pres Dilma expects to be easily re elected in 2014. What is going on? To put it directly. The Brazilian youth of 2013 is disciplining a misbehaving old generation. Kids are telling parents they are unfit to raise, educate and give them a better future. The youth are fed up with government taking everything and giving nothing in return; They are fed up with politicians stealing public money with total impunity; They are fed up with not a single politician doing jail time; They are fed up with a ruling elite that always make mistakes, making Brazil a permanent backward country. That’s all folks!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Thraex52: It is not surprising that Brazilian citizens are rioting. They see excessive funds being spent in preparation for the upcoming world cup and Olympics, politicians that are out of touch and in some cases corrupt, and a growing gap between their economic aspirations and whats attainable. Political parties, once ensconced, become complacent and focus only on staying in power. Brazilians should use this catalyst to mobilize themselves to vote out the current government and endorse politicians that better reflect their interests. And deliver the message that failing to deliver on what is important to your citizenry will get you voted out of office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: «Brazilians should use this catalyst to mobilize themselves to vote out the current government and endorse politicians that better reflect their interests.» Sound advice from a citizen of a modern democracy. Brazilians have tried that advice and it doesn’t work. Why? because in Brazil today’s honest candidate is tomorrow’s crook politician. Or, as Captain Nascimento, the character of the Bope movie says: E o sistema, parceiro – it’s the system, partner! Brazil’s political system is rigged to guarantee impunity when stealing taxpayers money is under question. Two days ago, during a TV break transmission showing the youth protesting against public corruption, a political propaganda commercial was aired showing infamous Paulo Salim Maluf — the postcard of a corrupt politician — asking for votes in the forthcoming election. He promised a crime – free Sao Paulo. Maluf is in the Interpol most wanted list for money laundering in Jersey. He cannot leave the country but has been elected many times by voters of Sao Paulo, considered the most developed state in the country. In Brazil, either the political system is changed by young PEOPLE or these street demonstration will fade away and business as usual for corrupt politicians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
The world has been optimistic about Brazil for the past decade. Productivity has risen as trade has been liberalized, state-owned companies have been sold and many industries deregulated. Hyperinflation has been controlled and the exchange rate has been floated. Social policies, called conditional cash transfers, have targeted the poor. And commodity exports to China soared. The economy grew stronger and many became richer. But the country has one of the highest levels of social inequality in the world. Many of the rich live in bubbles of prosperity, like Brasilia and beachfront avenues in major cities. The poor are almost invisible, forgotten in rural areas or marginalized in urban slums. And the policies that led to Brazil’s growth have been undermined since the 2003 inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who, along with all the left-wing parties, opposed those policies while out of power. On the positive side, Lula increased the scope of «bolsa família» (the umbrella name for all cash-transfer benefits) until it reached 12 million families. But he slowly discontinued the programs that had produced economic gains — a process that accelerated under President Dilma Rousseff, who took office in 2011. Private investors were scared off by zigzag regulatory changes. Government finances were stressed by the rising cost of developmental projects like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, as well as by generous wage concessions for public employees. After growing 7.5 percent in 2010, Brazil’s gross domestic product growth has stalled as the Chinese economy has slowed. Simultaneously, inflation and interest rates are rising. The first protest was aimed at a bus fare increase decreed by the mayor of São Paulo, who is aligned with Lula and Rousseff. But responsibility for crowd control fell under the governor of São Paulo state, who is a leading force in the opposition to President Rousseff. Soon the protestors were crowded out by waves of upper-middle-class and wealthy citizens touched by strong images depicting police violence. The protestors called for solidarity marches in other cities. But spontaneous crowds — everywhere, not just in Brazil — lack a consistent agenda and a leadership that can enact reform. The protesters will not win much and will soon recede. And unfortunately Brazil will remain socially unequal, attached to failed ideologies — economically stagnate but still democratic.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/19/will-the-protests-in-brazil-lead-to-change/the-protests-in-brazil-will-accomplish-very-little
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: If you ask the question above to any Brazilian over 30, the answer will be the same one given by the UNB professor. However, as the economists like to say, at the margin something can be accomplished. Let’s start with the corruption of the political system. It guarantees impunity to politicians guilty of stealing public money. Not a single politician has done jail time for that. This awful culture can be changed by legislation. Of course, politicians are going to resist to vote for a legislation that may take some of them to jail one day. However, public pressure can win that crucial legislation. Regarding the impact of street protests in better governance and economic success, the picture is more complicated. To start with, Brazil’s ruling elite is always in the wrong lane of other successful elites. The current PT administration has already made economic policy mistakes difficult to reverse. Besides, Brazil’s elite never believed in the market economy and competition as the US elite does. One reason is they are afraid of losing control of economic patronage and political control. Finally, there is historical evidence playing against Brazil becoming an efficient platform to export high value manufactured goods and services. The country lost the best opportunity during the 20th century when external conditions were highly favorable. In the 21st century, external conditions have changed in favor of countries like India and China.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/19/will-the-protests-in-brazil-lead-to-change/the-protests-in-brazil-will-accomplish-very-little
Just a few weeks ago, Mayara Vivian felt pretty good when a few hundred people showed up for a protest she helped organize to deride the government over a proposed bus fare increase. She had been trying to prod Brazilians into the streets since 2005, when she was only 15, and by now she thought she knew what to expect. But when tens of thousands of protesters thronged the streets this week, rattling cities across the country in a reckoning this nation had not experienced in decades, she was dumbfounded, at a loss to explain how it could have happened. “One hundred thousand people, we never would have thought it,” said Ms. Vivian, one of the founders of the Free Fare Movement, which helped start the protests engulfing Brazil. “It’s like the taking of the Bastille.” The mass protests thundering across Brazil have swept up an impassioned array of grievances — costly stadiums, corrupt politicians, high taxes and shoddy schools — and spread to more than 100 cities on Thursday night, the most yet, with increasing ferocity. All of a sudden, a country that was once viewed as a stellar example of a rising, democratic power finds itself upended by an amorphous, leaderless popular uprising with one unifying theme: an angry, and sometimes violent, rejection of politics as usual. Much like the Occupy movement in the United States, the anticorruption protests that shook India in recent years, the demonstrations over living standards in Israel or the fury in European nations like Greece, the demonstrators in Brazil are fed up with traditional political structures, challenging the governing party and the opposition alike. And their demands are so diffuse that they have left Brazil’s leaders confounded as to how to satisfy them. “The intensity on the streets is much larger than we imagined,” said Marcelo Hotimsky, a philosophy student who is another organizer of the Free Fare Movement. “It’s not something we control, or something we even want to control” (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Young Brazilians taking to the streets to demand clean government and decent public services is a foretold tale predicted by former Pres Lula in his second mandate. Lula used to say his major achievement was to be lifted millions of Brazilians from abject poverty. He also warned his fellow colleague politicians that once basic needs were satisfied, the growing middle class would be demanding good governance, code word for restraint in stealing taxpayers money. Pres Dilma Rousseff forgot Lula’s advice and is governing Brazil as business as usual. That is, making political deals and economic decisions aimed at guaranteeing her re election in 2014. Dilma has sealed shady political deals that foment public corruption seen in the (shoddy and costly) public works underway for the World Cup and Olympic Games. In addition, a populist economic policy which resulted in economic stagnation and growing inflation. Pres Dilma Rousseff is in trouble. Due to the next presidential election of 2014 she is not in a position to take decisive action in either the economy (to jump start growth) or to stop the social unrest (take decisive action against public corruption). The only factor playing in favor of Pres Dilma is the pathetic political opposition. They have no credible economic program and are traditional source of political corruption since the country became a republic in 1889.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: In their obsessive desire of self promotion and power, politicians become their own enemies. Former Pres Lula led the political lobbying of FIFA-IOC to host the World Cup 2014 and the Olympic games 2016. Lula’s intention was to show a ‘ new and modern’ Brazil being propelled into the 21st century by his leadership and the Workers Party. Instead, events taking place in the streets reveal the «old and real » Brazil of corrupt politicians and incompetent governments. Instead of applauses, Pres Dilma Rousseff was booed in the inaugural national team soccer game. The balance so far is positive. An inept political class is losing and people/democracy is winning. After all, Pres Lula did good by bringing those international events to Brazil. From now until 2014, average Brazilians can expel their grievances to the international media, eager to learn more about this strange South American giant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protests.html
(…) The bigger issue behind the dissatisfaction, however, is that Brazilians are still getting used to democracy. Two decades of fierce military dictatorship formally ended only in 1985. We still have a military police force to maintain public order. We still fear them. That is why these protests are so important. Not all Brazilians agree. Many think the demonstrations lack focus, are useless or even harmful. The press sometimes calls the protesters “vandals,” “delinquents” and “terrorists.” And there have been some acts of vandalism by the crowds. But that is no excuse to stay home. On Monday night we walked more than six miles, occupying avenues usually clogged with cars and buses. We lay down in the middle of Paulista Avenue and painted all sorts of wise messages on placards, like: “I’m so pissed off that I wrote this sign.” One boy was exhausted by the walking and just wrote, “for the right to stay in one place.” Most of the protesters were in their teens and 20s, and I felt very ancient in my 30s. I am sure we seemed as ineffective and foolish as our bottles of vinegar against a bomb of tear gas. But we have the right to be ineffective and foolish — we’re still learning how to protest. On Thursday night one million Brazilians poured into the streets of some 80 cities around the country. “Bring your salad. Salt and olive oil are optional.” That’s our message.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/opinion/brazils-vinegar-uprising.html
With cities across the nation heaving in the biggest protests in decades, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil convened an emergency meeting of top aides on Friday and announced that she would pursue measures touching on some of the grievances stirring the unrest, including a national transportation overhaul and the use of all oil royalties for education. But she has floated her ambitious proposal before — to use oil revenues to improve the beleaguered public schools — only to run up against stiff resistance from state governors who rely on the money to meet their budgets, leaving her ability to enact it in doubt. Her pledge came as the government put forward other small measures as well, like injecting new money to bolster transportation and pledging to better scrutinize financial corruption within its ranks. “Brazil fought a lot to become a democratic country, and it is fighting a lot to become a country that it is more just,” Ms. Rousseff said. In a show of resolve, Ms. Rousseff and other authorities also lashed out at the growing violence among some of the protesters, denouncing recent attacks on government buildings, acknowledging their concerns about security ahead of a visit by the pope and, in at least one case, threatening to deploy the army to the streets if the demonstrations continued to intensify. “I assure you, we will maintain order,” Ms. Rousseff said (…..)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/world/americas/sweeping-protests-in-brazil-pull-in-an-array-of-grievances.html
Professor Uziel Nogueira says: Pres Dilma Rousseff gave a well balanced speech to the nation last night. It remains to be seen whether the rage of the machine mood in mainstreet will change. In her speech, she defended the legitimate agenda of grievances against the corrupt political system expressed by protesters. She mentioned a series of measures to be taken in order to address the problems. She even mention the old agenda of political reform to combat public corruption. Millions of Brazilian households listened with attention the President speech. However, everybody knows that IF half of promises given by political leaders became deeds, Brazil would be a highly developed nation by now. At this juncture, Pres Dilma Rousseff should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Finally, a small twist in the life of Pres Dilma Rousseff. In her speech of last night, she lambasted the violence of a small group of agitators infiltrated among protesters. Ironically, Pres Dilma Rousseff used violence during her young years of armed activist in the 70s to change the political system, ruled by the military.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/world/americas/sweeping-protests-in-brazil-pull-in-an-array-of-grievances.html