Manifesting Democracy?. Группа авторов

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Название Manifesting Democracy?
Автор произведения Группа авторов
Жанр География
Серия
Издательство География
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781119331247



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of an insertion of a series of generic and abstract demands. As a headline in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper on 18 June 2013 stated, ‘Thousands take to the streets “against everything,”’ and placards subsequently announced that protests were not just about 20 cents. The media thus sought to dilute the conflict and its specific causes; since generic causes do not have agents and targets, they involve no-one.

      Figure 2.4 Demonstration against the fare increase, São Paulo, June 2013. Source: Reproduced by permission of Luiza Calagian.

      Alongside this narrative shift, there was a surge of protests throughout the country. The radical escalation of events that followed the demonstration of 13 June was attributed by the press and intellectuals to excessive police violence. The disproportionate repression was said to have harnessed the general population’s support for the demonstrators, which would explain the increase in the protests and the victory that was to ensue. This interpretation overlooks the fact that historically social movements are repressed, that the police in Brazil always deal violently with protests, and that, rather than boosting activism, the police action suffocates it. Once again the narrative shift obfuscated the existence and historical experience of popular organizations and their role in forging social activism, just as it concealed the problem of transport costs, which exclude people from taking part in the city. The question is, therefore, how to understand the growth of the protests in spite of the repression that took place?

      It is also necessary to understand the local political context in which these demonstrations took place in São Paulo (see Chapter 3). With the PT at the head of city hall, organizations, social movements, and a section of the population hoped that there would be greater opportunities to discuss and revoke the fare increase. Here, the PT city councillors’ opposition to the 2011 fare increase during Gilberto Kassab’s administration (2006–2012), as well as Haddad’s campaign to be São Paulo’s mayor in which he declared himself as a candidate more open to popular demands was still fresh in people’s memory. However, what was witnessed in 2013, instead, was Haddad as an intransigent mayor who, on the very same day he was obliged to reduce the fare, standing beside Governor Geraldo Alckmin, who made the announcement about overturning the fair increase, had stated to the press that very morning that he would not back down.

      The legacy of the events of June 2013 continues to be disputed. Some try to strip the protests of their meaning in terms of conflict and confrontation, whereas others attempt to deny them their popular meaning. The PT condemns the June protests for having brought the right wing onto the streets, for letting them out of the closet. Undoubtedly, Brazil witnessed a subsequent large-scale mobilization of the right, which has only strengthened since. But we should ask ourselves whether that uprising is a continuation of the June 2013 protests, or a response to the popular mobilization that threatened the elite’s privileges, demanding a right to the city? If we look back over recent history, we see that the dominant classes have never silently accepted any kind of initiative on the part of their subordinates. The PT’s argument reveals little more than the belief that there is no left beyond their own party so that any movements that are not organized by them, must be right-wing movements. In the PT’s view, social movements must be satisfied with the policy of what’s ‘possible,’ in what they propose, based on what is supposed to be class conciliation. They do not accept the criticism that they have adopted the elite’s agenda and have been defeated within it.

      Anyone who happened to be in São Paulo in June 2013 would have realized that the main topic on everyone’s lips was public transport. Inside buses, trains, offices, factories, bars, restaurants, and shops, people were talking about the fare increase and about something that had previously been unimaginable: free public transport. The general diffusion of this demand, combined with the generalized demonstrations throughout the city, forced those who had continually stated it was impossible to revoke the increase to do precisely that. Significant victories were obtained without the support of any of the country’s traditional institutional political forces: the reduction in fares in over 100 cities over the country, the inclusion within the constitution of transport as a social right, policies to prioritize collective transport (like exclusive bus lanes, and more funding for the construction of metros, trains, and bus routes), the school pass in São Paulo, and an enormous gain in the public debate around the subject of transport, opened up the possibility of free transport in people’s minds and its effective implementation.

       Translated by Lisa Shaw

      Notes

      1 1 While the opinions expressed in this chapter are solely that of the authors, it is important to stress that they were formed from collective discussions in meetings, seminars, discussion groups, and so on, in the Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement).

      2 2 Despite the scope of the protests, in this chapter we refer specifically to the events in the city of São Paulo.

      3