Only a few days left to regain hope.

As a stubborn utopian, I always say that I have two challenges in life: to bring restlessness and sadness into coexistence with joy, and to never lose the stubbornness of the utopian! My hope has gone through bad times, but it has never grown weary. I believe, like my dear departed friend Dom Helder, that the sum of collective dreams will always transform into reality. 

I always think of my friends, both men and women, who sowed the seeds of the utopia of the possible. Many have died, and others continue the political struggle for a healthier planet. Together we walked many rocky paths, but even on these arid paths, flowers bloom... We challenged the dictatorship, democracy was achieved, and many dreams became reality. Time passed without us noticing; we became grandparents, great-grandparents, but our ideals did not age, and we will never give up the fight for another possible world. With us, new actors emerged, willing to change the world. The dream of a better world continued. We were very confident that this paradigm to be conquered would never be interrupted. This was my generation of struggles and battles.

We managed to elect a metalworker as president of Brazil. Sometimes we wondered how this humble worker and his team managed to govern a country of continental dimensions within republican norms, without major conflicts that could paralyze the functioning of democracy. Brazil was moving from the periphery to become an influential actor on the international stage thanks to the governments of Lula and Dilma. The architects of a world for all were aware of the role Brazil could play in a potentially multipolar world. All these advances disrupt the political strategy of right-wing conservatives in Brazil and in the world of great powers.

The arrival of a Brazilian of humble origins to power was tolerated by them, until the invisible became subjects and began demanding structural reforms that would only be possible in the long term. This transition from excluded to included, from local actor to actor exercising citizenship, is a slow process... Many actors in the new civil society will demand new rights and no longer accept "petty reforms"; they want social and political reforms. Attempts to shake the foundations of the Big House to rebuild a new societal project shake the dominant economic elite. The PT governments become a threat. Lula manages to put the first woman in power. President Dilma is re-elected in a climate of great tension. The new societal project cannot erode the pillars of the Big House. New, rocky paths have emerged and become almost inaccessible to the new actors of active citizenship. Amidst many dreams comes the nightmare... 

We forgot that the owners of the Big House in Brazil continued to exist and dominate this immense territory. We forgot that they acquired all the means of communication. We won 4 presidential elections and did nothing to guarantee its plurality, when in all democratic countries in the world there are regulatory bodies. We also forgot to analyze that the neoliberal model establishes global governance and creates the basis for an ideology. It will be precisely the possession of the means of communication that will serve as the global propagation of this new ideology.  

The society that wasn't afraid to be happy and that aspired to create strong bonds of fraternity and social peace will have its path abruptly interrupted! The political citizenship that was thought to have been achieved was a mere illusion. A brutal barrier arose, and the dream of a new tomorrow turned into a nightmare.

The utopia of the possible has transformed into dystopia. A process of depoliticization of the people begins with the support of disinformation journalism; information is fabricated and truncated with the aim of deceiving and inciting others to believe lies, as well as casting doubt on verified facts. Those who produced this communication strategy weakened many democracies. In Brazil, where the media was concentrated in the hands of a few elite families, this strategy had a wide reach throughout the country. Journalists from other media outlets, called alternative media, who went against the grain, did not have the same audience reach or financial resources. With the internet, lies spread with unprecedented speed. Thus, it was very easy to dismantle the coalition governments of the Workers' Party (PT), as well as the social achievements that benefited the poorest. Hatred began to be disseminated, giving rise to a violent and ignorant society. 

The heirs of the plantation owner culture have allied themselves with fascists, fundamentalists—in other words, the worst groups that existed in Brazilian society. They contributed to the rise to power of ignorant psychopaths, fascists with whom fraternal coexistence is impossible. They elected their most worthy representative to the presidency of the republic! 

I will not prolong this reflection by repeating what I and others have already written about Dilma's second term (2014). It was the fourth election won by the PT (Workers' Party). Disgruntled, all sorts of traps were set to hinder her governability. Despite the President's attempt to coexist with those holding economic power, the global crisis and the collapse of her parliamentary coalition did not give her the tranquility to govern. In August 2016, the coup was launched. Her Vice-President would be primarily responsible for the impeachment maneuver in parliament. The traitor's rise to the presidency would crumble the foundations of social achievements, blocking all social spending for 20 years; followed by the implementation of the Lawfare method to obtain Lula's imprisonment and prevent the favorite in all opinion polls for the 2018 elections from running. 

There was no popular support for the institutions to fulfill their constitutional role. The Judiciary would then become one of the protagonists of the chaos in Brazil; most of its members opted for the judicialization of politics and allowed the political space to be dominated by judges and prosecutors who became enemies of the PT (Workers' Party) and Lula. They changed the constitutional rules of law to imprison the former president of Brazil, creating a state of exception that led to the arbitrary imprisonment of the greatest Brazilian statesman, Lula da Silva.

The newly elected president becomes a disgrace, and Brazil disappears from the international stage.  

Inequalities become the norm, perpetuating the customs and traditions of the elite. With the coup and the governments of Temer and Bolsonaro, this conservative Brazilian elite finds itself strengthened.

Throughout the history of Brazilian society, this cursed legacy of the Big House has remained intact, forging within it a dominant elite that has always trivialized racism, always accepted the misery and poverty of thousands of Brazilians. Black people, indigenous people, homosexuals, favela residents were expected to continue accepting all forms of discrimination as normal. The invisible majority could not erode the pillars of the Big House. 

My generation certainly made mistakes in its haste to change society, which is normal for any human being. However, the perception of the reality of facts and the world of fake news leads us to draw lessons about our political journey, about our life journey. For those who hold political office, the demands of exercising power are always a learning experience and a way to learn about oneself and recover. President Lula has a capacity for listening, a lot of experience with power, and the humility to review his mistakes. There is no politician in Brazil more defamed and persecuted than Lula, to the point of being unjustly imprisoned and deprived of his freedom for almost two years. Today we have the opportunity to bring back the metalworker to govern, to care for the Brazilian people, as Lula defines his governance today. Today Brazil faces a vital choice: either social peace, fraternity among peoples, a solidary and ecological territorial development with participatory democracy, or barbarism, death, fascism with a theocracy dominated by religious fundamentalists and militias capable of developing a civil war. The choice is easy, just vote for number 13 and his allies to have a new Congress committed to the interests of the Brazilian people and nation.

We must rediscover the noble meaning of politics, which allows a community to act upon itself without losing sight of the general interest. In this election period, it is urgent to carry out an electoral cleansing in the House of Representatives. We must elect candidates who are representative of Brazilian society, committed to the collective interests of the people, to the rule of law, and to the defense of national sovereignty and the environment. Democracy needs truly active citizens, leaders and representatives endowed with the capacity for action for the common good and with political acumen. Republican institutions need to be solid and respected, giving life to collective values ​​and guaranteeing their transmission. If representative democracy is failing, the blame does not lie solely with politicians; politics is inseparable from the exercise of citizenship.

Only social activism articulated with grassroots "militancy" can open a potentially promising opportunity to rehabilitate another way of doing politics in Brazil. It is urgent to establish direct dialogue to shake the exercise of citizenship out of its lethargy. The time has come to guarantee the return of dreams and the utopia of the possible, for Lula's return from the first round.