Our First Role Is to Organize
With Bolsonaro in office, Brazil’s left needs more than ever to build mass resistance to the Right. We spoke to two socialist congresswomen about how they’re using their positions in the state to rebuild the country’s socialist movement.
Demonstrators protest against Jair Bolsonaro and in favor of presidential candidate Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party on October 20, 2018 in Brasilia, Brazil. (Victor Moriyama / Getty Images)
In the same election that brought Jair Bolsonaro into the Brazilian presidency, the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSOL) doubled its delegation to ten seats in the federal legislature. This includes the victories of Fernanda Melchionna and Sâmia de Souza Bomfim, both leaders in Brazil’s movements for feminism and public education.
At a moment when socialists in the United States are winning office in numbers not seen for a century, Brazilian socialists can offer strategic lessons based on decades of hard-fought experience in and outside the state. These two elected leaders offer a clear-sighted strategy, with concrete examples, for using positions in the state to build militant movements outside the state.
On August 13, tens of thousands of students and teachers across Brazil launched strikes and protests against the Bolsonaro government’s public education cuts. This marks an escalation of prior national demonstrations on May 15 and 30.
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