[Three videos from Brazil, documenting the massive protests at the corruption and mis-use of State resources for the Pope’s visit. The videos are narrated in Portuguese, and the videos give visual testimony to the ongoing problems of credibility and legitimacy of the Brazilian state, in the face of massive protests of bus fares, World Cup extravagance and Pope extravagance. Sports and religion seem to have greatly declined in their ability to confuse, distract, and pacify the anger of the masses. — Frontlines ed.]
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Scenes of confrontation between PMs and demonstrators during the visit of Pope John Paul II San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro
Jul 22, 2013 — Jornal A Nova Democracia – Yesterday afternoon, thousands of people took to the streets of Sula River to protest against the exorbitant spending on the Pope’s visit to Brazil for World Catholic Youth Day. As on other occasions, demonstrators demanded the impeachment of the governor, Sergio Cabral, and the end of the annihilation of the poor in the slums — and the whereabouts of the worker/resident of the Rocinha slum, Amarildo de Souza Lima, who disappeared after being arrested by PMs of CPE. A barrier formed by 350 police officers of the Shock Battalion was jamming the access to Guanabara Palace, where there was a meeting between the Pope and the political managers of Dilma and Cabral e Paes, declared enemies of the masses. The demonstrators were not intimidated and, with courage and determination, faced the huge repressive apparatus of the old State.
Cenas do confronto entre PMs e manifestantes durante visita do papa Francisco ao Rio de Janeiro
Jul 22, 2013 — Jornal A Nova Democracia — Na tarde de ontem, milhares de pessoas tomaram as ruas da zona Sula do Rio para protestar contra os gastos exorbitantes com a visita do papa ao Brasil para a Jornada Mundial da Juventude Católica. Como em outras ocasiões, manifestantes exigiram o impeachment do governador Sérgio Cabral, o fim do extermínio de pobres nas favelas e o paradeiro do operário e morador da favela da Rocinha, Amarildo Souza Lima, que desapareceu depois de ser detido por PMs da UPP. Um cordão de isolamento formado por 350 policiais do Batalhão de Choque bloqueava o acesso ao Palácio Guanabara, onde acontecia uma reunião entre o papa e os gerentes de turno Dilma, Cabral e Paes, declarados inimigos das massas. Os manifestantes não se intimidaram e, com coragem e determinação, enfrentaram o incrementado aparato repressor do velho Estado.
RJ: exclusive Footage of the courageous resistance of the masses to the violence of the PM in Leblon
July 18, 2013 — Jornal A Nova Democracia – Last Wednesday night, thousands of people have protested in the street where the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral Filho, lives. The demonstrators denounced the corruption of Cabral, the theft and waste of public money, the displacement of poor neighborhoods for construction of mega-sports-events, the criminalization and elimination of the youth in the slums, and the attack on indigenous peoples. The demonstrators have walked the streets of Leblon, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world. A few meters from the house of Cabral, PMs did not hesitate to attack. But as has happened repeatedly, the masses resisted bravely and faced the repressive troops of the fascist State.
RJ: Cenas exclusivas da corajosa resistência das massas à violência da PM em ato no Leblon
Jul 18, 2013 — Jornal A Nova Democracia – Na noite da última quarta-feira, milhares de pessoas fizeram um protesto no acesso à rua onde mora o governador do Rio de Janeiro,. Os manifestantes denunciaram a corrupção na gestão Cabral, o derrame do dinheiro público, as remoções de bairros pobres por conta dos megaeventos, o extermínio da juventude nas favelas e o ataque aos povos indígenas. Os manifestantes caminharam pelas ruas do Leblon, um dos bairros mais caros do mundo. A poucos metros da casa de Cabral, PMs não hesitarão em atacar. Mas como tem acontecido repetidas vezes, as massas resistiram bravamente e enfrentaram as tropas de repressão do Estado fascista.
Police arrest filmmaker from Media Ninja and shoot lethal ammunition at protesters during the Pope’s visit to Rio
July 23, 2013 — Jornal A Nova Democracia — Yesterday afternoon, thousands of people have faced the police, denounced the exorbitant spending for the Pope’s visit to Brazil, and demanded the impeachment of governor Sergio Cabral. After the showdown, PMs chased demonstrators through the streets of the barrio de Laranjeira. A filmmaker of Media Ninja was arbitrarily arrested while transmitting live news of the protest to thousands of people. One protester identified as Leonardo Caruso was shot with live ammunition and cared for by the red cross, then taken to the hospital de Souza Aguiar, in the Center of the city.
Polícia prende Mídia Ninja e dispara munição letal durante visita do Papa ao Rio
Jul 23, 2013– Na tarde de ontem, milhares de pessoas enfrentaram a polícia em um ato que, entre outras bandeiras, questionava os gastos exorbitantes por conta da visita do papa ao Brasil e exigia o impeachment do governador Sérgio Cabral. Após o confronto, PMs perseguiram manifestantes aleatoriamente pelas ruas do. Um cinegrafista da Mídia Ninja foi preso arbitrariamente enquanto transmitia a manifestação ao vivo para milhares de pessoas.
Um manifestante identificado como Leonardo Caruso foi alvejado com um tiro de munição real e atendido por socorristas da cruz vermelha. Em seguida, o manifestante foi levado para o hospital Souza Aguiar, no Centro da cidade.
[The New York Times reports the Brazilian power elite’s attempts to attribute “blunders” — not mass resentment at religious and political arrogance, extravagance, and brutal repression — for the obvious breakdown of bourgeois authority and credibility in social and political life. — Frontlines ed.]
Pope Francis with Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. Pope Francis, with a long history of support for repressive powers in Latin America, became an object of the ongoing mass protests against Dilma Rousseff’s corrupt and repressive regime — an unintended consequence of a visit planned to “fan the fervor of the faithful” and to distract the anger of the oppressed.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis celebrated his first public Mass on Wednesday at one of Latin America’s largest shrines, asking Catholics to shun the “ephemeral idols” of material success, power and pleasure, but his visit to Brazil continued to be marked by tension over blunders by its Brazilian organizers.
The missteps began minutes after Francis arrived in Rio on Monday, when his small motorcade got stuck on a crowded thoroughfare, exposing the pope to a mob scene of people trying to touch him through the open window of his car. On Tuesday, Rio’s subway system broke down for two hours, leaving thousands gathered here for a conference of Catholic youth scrambling to reach a seaside Mass.
Rio’s political authorities have also faced scrutiny over their handling of street demonstrations around the pope’s visit. They acknowledged using undercover agents to infiltrate the protests but denied claims that their intelligence officers were to blame for violence, including the throwing of firebombs. Continue reading →
I would like to take this moment to possibly enlighten you to a situation we as Hispanic Mexican Nationals would like to share with all of you. Our hope is to create discussion and ultimately change this sad reality. Due to being such a small population in California prisons, the majority do not understand or even realize (much less consider). Hopefully with this essay I’m able to express correctly, sufficiently, and effectively these little known conditions and bring attention to this issue. We suffer and struggle daily in a foreign land, where many of us do not even write, understand, or speak English.
This struggle not only involves Mexican Nationals in California, but also all undocumented immigrants in prison around this nation. Some of us are here doing life terms with no family or friends support (mentally, emotionally, economically, physically, etc.), the most basic of human conditions to be social. Think about this for a minute. For family members to visit us from Mexico requires an incredible amount of patience and hard work, and huge obstacles at the US-MEXICO border. For example, on my situation I haven’t seen my father, brothers, and some of my sisters since 1996.
Why??-because my family couldn’t process the visas for them and couldn’t afford to pay the expenses to travel. In the past, I used to see my mother once a year. My family had to work and save money for my elderly mother to be able to come visit me just one time every year. Unfortunately, since 2007, my family couldn’t afford it anymore. So I haven’t seen the rest of my family since 1996, which is 14 years total and counting. This is just my example. Many more undocumented immigrants/Hispanics in prison suffer the same fate. Under life terms and some of us validated in the Security Housing Units (SHU), we may very well never see or hug our immediate family and friends. Imagine the suffering and heartache we endure??? Living life sentences inside ‘the grey box’ (SHU), under this daily struggle, under this psychological and physical torture 23 hours a day we wait to hear and receive news from our family back home.
Many of us came to the U.S. from very rural towns with little or no education and severely economically challenged areas in Mexico. As we can agree, many who come to the U.S. do so for the ‘American Dream’: Land of opportunity and a better way of life. A sacrifice for ourselves and our families back home. Due to having to put education on hold early in our youth to work and contribute to our family’s welfare, ultimately basic reading and writing much time is lost and thousands of us risk our lives and cross the border (breaking U.S. laws) and some of those thousands end up in prisons, detention centers, and jails across the nation. Fewer still get life terms that cuts off communication with family and limits it to phone calls (when rare monetary ability allows a phone call home) and letters (for those who can read and write). Continue reading →
[Increasingly, acts of protest and resistance are denounced or dismissed as “Maoist” by the the state. — Frontlines ed.]
When the ‘Maoists’ Took Over the Streets of Kolkata
Why did the Kamduni incident – the rape and murder of a young college student and the utterly insensitive handling of the issue by the West Bengal government and the ruling Trinamool Congress – spark off such a huge reaction to bring together a wide spectrum of civil society under one umbrella in Kolkata on 21 June?
Rajashri Dasgupta (rajashridasgupta@gmail.com) is an independent Kolkata-based journalist specialising on issues related to gender, health, democratic rights and social movements.
It was a hot and muggy afternoon on 21 June, when in an incredible display of public solidarity and defiance, thousands of people marched through the streets of Kolkata in silent protest. There were no political parties to manage the swelling numbers, no brandishing of political flags to claim victory for any organisation. Led by respected intellectuals, people poured in from all corners of the city as well as its outskirts to show their support and solidarity – elderly people, some with sticks and crutches; homemakers, for many of whom it was their first rally; working people who spontaneously got off buses or skipped work. There were students in large numbers with banners and placards, teachers, villagers holding hands for safety in an unfamiliar place, rights activists distributing leaflets, feminists with colourful posters, non-governmental organisation workers, actors, academics and journalists – all came together to protest the spurt in crimes against women in the state.
The protest was triggered by the gang-rape and murder of a young college girl Sheila (not her real name) in Kamduni village, Barasat district on 7 June and the insensitive handling of the incident by the state government. It was for the first time that the city, famous for its processions, witnessed an outpouring from such a wide cross-section of society, about an issue generally left to women’s groups and feminists to battle: the safety and security of women.
The rally of more than 10,000 strong was also a political expression of indignation against the constant bogey of “the other” raised by the ruling party to gag dissent. Suddenly, from one section of the rally, young men and women raised slogans demanding azaadi (freedom), startling this reporter since the word is usually associated with the Kashmir issue. For the people of Bengal that afternoon, however, the rallying cry of azaadi snowballed to take on a larger significance. It not only meant freedom of women from violence, but also implied the freedom of citizens to live without fear, the freedom to speak up, to question, and the freedom to protest. Since 2011, with the promise of paribartan (change) that had swept Mamata Banerjee to power in West Bengal, defeating an almost invincible Left Front (LF) rule of 34 years, the chief minister has silenced every question, protest or any whiff of dissent, real or imaginary, by dismissing it as a conspiracy against her from her opponents, whom she dubbed the “Maoists”. Continue reading →
Professor Akinyele Umoja, chair, African American Studies at Georgia State University discusses his new book: We Will Shoot Back: Armed Self-defense in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. This program was sponsored by the Stone Center and the Bull’s Head Bookstore of UNC at Chapel Hill. This is part of the presentation Professor Umoja made at Chapel Hill, length: 30:38
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Prof. Umoja discusses why he wrote We Will Shoot Back
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The Book, by Akinyele Umoja
The notion that the civil rights movement in the southern United States was a nonviolent movement remains a dominant theme of civil rights memory and representation in popular culture. Yet in dozens of southern communities, Black people picked up arms to defend their leaders, communities, and lives. In particular, Black people relied on armed self-defense in communities where federal government officials failed to safeguard activists and supporters from the violence of racists and segregationists, who were often supported by local law enforcement.
In We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, Akinyele Omowale Umoja argues that armed resistance was critical to the efficacy of the southern freedom struggle and the dismantling of segregation and Black disenfranchisement. Intimidation and fear were central to the system of oppression in Mississippi and most of the Deep South. To overcome the system of segregation, Black people had to overcome fear to present a significant challenge to White domination. Armed self-defense was a major tool of survival in allowing some Black southern communities to maintain their integrity and existence in the face of White supremacist terror. By 1965, armed resistance, particularly self-defense, was a significant factor in the challenge of the descendants of enslaved Africans to overturning fear and intimidation and developing different political and social relationships between Black and White Mississippians.
This riveting historical narrative relies upon oral history, archival material, and scholarly literature to reconstruct the use of armed resistance by Black activists and supporters in Mississippi to challenge racist terrorism, segregation, and fight for human rights and political empowerment from the early 1950s through the late 1970s. Continue reading →
(Não é pelos vinte centavos) — (We will arrive, but Not by twenty cents)
Cada um fazendo a sua parte, vamos construir um país melhor. Uma homenagem de Seu Jorge, Gabriel Moura e Pretinho da Serrinha a todos os Brasileiros……(Each one doing its part, we are going to build a better country.)
Brazil Summerfest opened in New York City this past weekend. This is the third summer that lovers of Brazilian music have organized the festival to celebrate it in New York. The annual festival is a treat for the tens of thousands of Brazilians who live in and near New York City, not to mention the millions of international tourists who come to New York every summer.
This year’s festival includes performances by Gaby Amarantos, Marcelo D2, Toninho Horta, Tulipa Ruiz, and others. They will perform at outdoor locations like Central Park’s SummerStage and the South Street Seaport, as well as clubs like Joe’s Pub.
Certainly the biggest name on the list of performers is Jorge Mário da Silva, the 43-year-old singer and songwriter known as Seu Jorge. When asked about this year’s festival and what makes it special, Seu Jorge was quick to point out that all the musicians and artists from Brazil have been affected by the mass demonstrations that have erupted recently in Brazil. The street protests have inspired him to write a song.
“If this thing had happened in Jamaica, certainly Bob Marley would do something, wouldn’t he? And if something like this were happening in Nigeria, wouldn’t Fela Kuti have written some song?” Seu Jorge remarked.“The idea was to write a song that would lead people to sing for their rights,” continued Seu Jorge, who is known in the US not only as an international ambassador of Brazilian music, but also as an actor in the Wes Anderson film, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Continue reading →
