The coup is against the rights of young people.

The project, represented by former President Lula and President Dilma, initiated a new cycle in public policies in our country. Millions of young people (15 to 29 years old) gained access to a range of opportunities and began to be understood as subjects of rights. The construction and implementation of youth policies up until 2005 was something very distant from the reality of the federal government and, consequently, of state and municipal governments, which treated the issue as secondary and, in many cases, lacked specific mechanisms to address the topic.

The creation of the National Youth Secretariat and CONJUVE (National Youth Council) constituted an important step in this trajectory, initially with the implementation of ProJovem, which included thousands of young people and represented an important moment in this journey. Young people, who were once seen as a problem, began to have a series of opportunities after 2005, unfolding into other policies such as PROUNI, REUNI, ENEM, Science Without Borders, PRONATEC, Youth Stations, Juventude Viva, Agrarian Residency, FIES, Quotas, among others.

Brazil has faced a moment of demographic bonus and youth as agents of transformation. This entire process occurred in harmony with civil society, various movements, and the holding of three major and important youth conferences, which contributed to the construction of several programs, projects, and the implementation of legal frameworks for youth. This growing scale was fundamental for the dissemination of youth policies to states and municipalities. Young people have become the driving force of Brazil.

This positive wave in youth policies and the actions of diverse youth groups have led to the approval of legal frameworks, through the Youth Constitutional Amendment and later with the Youth Statute, which presents a set of rights and opportunities for young people and also strengthens the institutional framework of these policies.

Gradually, it also became clear that young people live and construct diverse agendas and narratives spread across the diversity of Brazil. This strengthening of youth policies has involved and continues to involve culture, access to the city, sports, the right to life for Black youth, young women, LGBT people, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, rural youth, and quilombola communities.

All this diversity became increasingly clear, as did the potential of spaces for dialogue, coexistence, and the construction of policies for young people, such as the Youth Conferences, the Plano Juventude Viva (Youth Alive Plan), intense mobilizations, and the series of youth struggles, especially after the June 2013 protests.

Youth policies implemented by the Lula and Dilma governments reinforced the process of social transformation in Brazil and boosted the formation of a new generation for the country. All these achievements and opportunities were only possible through constant dialogue with broad societal participation and unrestricted respect for democracy.

Given the current moment of democratic rupture that we are experiencing in Brazil, and which has also occurred in other Latin American countries such as Honduras (2009) and Paraguay (2012), the first attack signaled by the coup plotters is on social policies, impacting the diversity of opportunities that the Brazilian people have enjoyed in the last 13 years.

The first actions of the coup government were to end cross-cutting policies and the diversity of public policies. The end of the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality, Youth and Human Rights and the dismantling of SECADI/MEC, which oversaw ProJovem and policies for Black, Quilombola, Indigenous and Gypsy populations, have the clear objective of relegating these agendas to a secondary position and ending various inclusive and transformative policies.

Brazil today is governed by a group of usurpers who were not elected by popular vote and have no commitment to social and youth policies in the country. The illegitimate government, the result of a legal-media coup, believes that no right is absolute (except for those of the traditional elites), especially for young people who demonstrate and fight for their rights and for more social gains. Therefore, it has no commitment to youth rights and policies. The stance of the coup government, led by the "young people" of Eduardo Cunha, Michel Temer, and MBL, who advocate for the criminalization of youth movements through the attempted establishment of the UNE (National Union of Students) Parliamentary Inquiry Commission and the incarceration of poor and Black youth with the agenda of reducing the age of criminal responsibility in the Senate, is a vivid demonstration of their lack of commitment to the agenda built over years of struggle and to the achievements reached in the last decade.

In April of this year, President Dilma Rousseff sent a message to the National Congress requesting constitutional urgency in the consideration of the bill on resistance to arrest, which amends the Code of Criminal Procedure and provides for the investigation of deaths and bodily injuries committed by police officers on duty. The announcement of the document's submission occurred at the opening ceremony of the 12th National Conference on Human Rights. The objective was to strengthen the fight for the reduction of violence against youth – especially black youth – and against both men and women.

In practice, the request for urgency means that Bill 4471/12, authored by Congressman Paulo Teixeira (PT-SP), must be considered by the plenary of the Chamber within 45 days. If this did not happen, the other legislative deliberations of the House would be interrupted until the bill is voted on.

However, the illegitimate president, Michel Temer, withdrew the order for the expedited processing of the Resistance Reports bill. This action aims to please his allies. One of the main groups supporting Temer is the public security bloc (generically known as the "bullet bloc"), which opposes the bill.

The latest attack on 50 million young Brazilians concerns the controversy surrounding data caps and franchise charges on fixed internet services. President Dilma Rousseff had blocked it, but interim president Michel Temer has authorized the end of unlimited internet in Brazil. According to the president of the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), João Rezende, the government's policy is not to prevent operators from limiting data plans.

It's worth remembering that the data cap has been temporarily suspended by Anatel itself since April precisely so that the debate could be deepened and operators could adapt to the requirements of the new format. Nowadays, internet access is totally related to social inclusion; this fact elevates its importance and the need to curb the operators' thirst for profit, preserving the interests of society.

To "improve" the situation of setbacks, the appointment of the current Minister of Justice (former Secretary of Public Security in the Alckmin government), Alexandre Moraes, represents the nationalization of police repression, just as happened in the repossession of schools without a court order; in the actions against young black people from the peripheries, who suffer from violence and extermination by the Military Police, responsible for one in four people murdered in the city of São Paulo in 2015.

In the economic field, we have witnessed intense movements towards privatization and the handing over of pre-salt oil reserves to international capital, as well as a profound and structural revision of the criteria of the "market," of programs such as PRONATEC and Science Without Borders, among others, and the partnership with private institutions for the provision of secondary and higher education, in addition to significant setbacks in affirmative action policies.

The pre-salt oil reserves belong to the Brazilian people and must be used to transform the lives of young people through education. And the Brazilian state needs to prioritize the interests of society over the financial market and speculative capital.

We have taken many steps backward in terms of policies promoting opportunities, youth rights, and national sovereignty. Given the transformations achieved in recent years, we are faced with a situation that points to the urgent need to build a new agenda for political, economic, and social development in order to improve mechanisms for participation, guarantee new rights, and enhance the quality of life for individuals and public services. This need is incompatible with initiatives to reduce the role of the State, make labor laws more flexible, or cut social benefits that have contributed to the growth of our economy.

The thousands of young people who dreamed of and helped build youth policies in recent years do not recognize Temer's coup government. The youth will not accept the removal of rights and the surrender of national wealth.