This is a test case for the way oligarchies and imperialism have sought to use the shell of democracy to undermine the democratic aspirations of the people.
Liberation theology is still alive in Brazil, but it has lost a lot of ground. We must learn from past mistakes and create socialist popular democratic spaces from the base that challenge the brutal inequality of the capitalist pyramid.
Brazil Election: Landless Workers, Chomsky Meets Lula, French Left Leader, El Salvador Left vs Right, Transforming the UK, South Asia Women's Movements, Weekly Protest in Austria
Lula's response to Court decision denying his right to run for President: "If they wish to silence our voices and defeat our project for the country, they are fooling themselves. We are still alive, in the hearts and memories of the people."
Indigenous Andean Women, Lula Renounces, Modi's Crackdown, Swedish Election, Nazis on the Street; Basra Uprising
Lula’s crime was to be a worker and a popular political leader in an elitist country. The challenge for the left is to rebuild a democratic movement that will put the political system, the media, the judicial system and the state at the service of political freedom.
The trade union center CUT announced a vigil in front of the prison where Lula is being held. The resistance recognizes that the fight for Lula's freedom is central to the fight for democracy and against the neo-liberal coup taking place in Brazil.
Power depends on correlation of strength. The bourgeoisie and its minions use the judicial power to suit their interests as if this was a monarchy, with no oversight by society. They trampled on the Constitution in order to reach their goals. The working class has only one space where it can exert its political power: mobilization on the streets.
The judicial coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for 50 years. Dilma's second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and U.S.-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers' Party) was bad news for the opposition, because it suggested that PT founder Lu¡s In cio Lula da Silva could return in 2018.
The mass movements starting in June 2013 were the largest and most significant protests in Brazil in a generation, and they have shaken up the country's political system. Their explosive growth, size and extraordinary reach caught everyone – the left, the right, and the government – by surprise. This article examines these movements in light of the achievements and shortcomings of the democratic transition, in the mid-1980s, and the experience of the administration.
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