The unstoppable force of the PT

"It's incredible the force things seem to have when they need to happen." I don't remember who coined this phrase, but I'll quote it anyway, off the top of my head, as they say, but with the due care and honesty of putting it in quotation marks.

The PT, that party which, when still in its infancy, I helped, like many others, to nurture and subtly push so that it could take its first, fragile steps, is turning 34 years old.

Therefore, that boy is now a "young man" who, on the cusp of middle age, between us, makes his thousands, I believe millions, of "fathers" and "mothers" proud throughout Brazil and around the world.

That boy has gotten up to so much, including a few pranks, it must be said, that today, besides pride, I also feel immense satisfaction for having helped him with his first steps.

He even managed to elect a former metalworker, a factory worker, a migrant from the Northeast as president of the Republic!

That "boy," even as a baby, I can attest to that. His gaze reflected the generosity, shrewdness, gallantry, and fearlessness of those who aspire to and desire to change the world. Perhaps he didn't actually manage to change the world, but he significantly changed his country. His example is envied and copied by other nations around the globe, in a "subversive" and humanistic globalization.

Just recently, this "boy" once again demonstrated his impressive value, strength, and "esprit de corps." In a wave of solidarity never before seen in Brazilian politics, hundreds of "caretakers" of this young party, which, like all of us, seems to aspire to remain "forever young," took money from their own pockets, from their hard-earned savings, to pay the multimillion-dollar fines imposed on some of its main leaders who had been convicted, as is known, in a spurious political process propagated by the oligopoly of the mainstream media, by the most conservative and reactionary groups in society, and executed by a court of exception and its henchmen.

The voices of curse and insult – perhaps out of resentment, according to some; perhaps out of envy, habit, or vice, according to many others – still felt entitled to condemn and attack this genuine gesture of solidarity and camaraderie, so rare in the society in which we (barely) survive. This is the society that that child of yesteryear, now a young man in his thirties, is trying, little by little and slowly, to transform, change, and improve.

The voices of imprecation, hatred, and insult, from the depths of their persecutory and hateful fury, said that those who contributed to the virtual "crowdfunding" for the Workers' Party should also be investigated and condemned, because there, too, in that simple, irrefutable, overwhelming gesture of solidarity, there were "strong indications" of "money laundering."

A vile man sees in others a reflection of his own vileness.

In other words, they're all criminals! Simply for having the audacity to be supporters of the Workers' Party? Or are they criminals for being supportive? Perhaps for being left-wing?! Maybe...

Perhaps because they are all of that so-called "race." But what "race" is this that, unbreakable, resists the whip of the infamous; that does not falter, does not bend even under the torture of ignominy?!

What these voices of curse, hatred, and infamy, in their atavistic impulse to oppress and violate, seem not to have realized – yet! – is that the more they lie, provoke, intimidate, mistreat, and even beat this "child," the stronger, more mature, and larger it becomes.

For this "child" carries within itself a spirit, a light, a hope that, everything suggests, cannot be extinguished; it has no end, no place, no time; it carries within its heart audacious forces that nourish, illuminate, inspire, and nurture the resolute journey of an entire generation.

And the journey of this "child," and of the generation that nurtures and protects it, is the same journey of a multitude of Brazilians who still dare, together – some more attentive and organized; others more scattered and distracted – to tread the eternal path of seeking another destiny: that of a more just and supportive Brazil for all.