Lula's march in ABC is a message to the elites: he hasn't changed sides.

On Thursday, October 6, 2022, while covering Lula's first campaign event in this second round, I felt like I was taking a journey through history. 

I believe that two kilometers separate the ABC Metalworkers' Union from the Cathedral of São Bernardo. While shopkeepers waved to Lula, I remembered the images I saw during the metalworkers' strike days in 1979 and 1980. 

I was 16 or 17 years old, participating in the student movement in Sorocaba and, as a nearly anonymous activist, in the founding of the Workers' Party in the city. We were connected to the struggle in the ABC region. 

We knew that something much bigger was at stake there than a movement for a salary adjustment that would at least compensate for inflation. It was a fight for democracy. 

And Lula was the embodiment of this battle that has always been waged: the exploited versus the exploiters. Lula, with his thick, unshaven black beard, represented the exploited in their many facets, from the young man who fell (and still falls) victim to death squads or the police themselves, to the father who lost his job because of the recession. 

At the end of the march this Thursday, Lula, with his white hair and beard now thinning, showed that he hadn't changed sides, and gave a speech that brought to mind those days of 1979/1980. 

During those tense days, the Workers' Party itself was born, along with the CUT (Unified Workers' Central), the MST (Landless Workers' Movement), the Constituent Assembly, direct elections, Lula's own election, and so many other popular achievements. 

It was, as I said, the fight for democracy, the same fight that is being waged now, in the same physical space: the Union and the Main Church of the Catholic Church, this time without the presence of priests and bishops. 

William Amarelo, a documentary filmmaker forged in the new generation of communicators committed to popular causes, took some pictures, including one of me, without my knowledge, as I was preparing to go live on Giro das Onze, on TV 247, on top of the sound truck. 

I shared the photos on my social media so that, one day, perhaps, grandchildren will see them and be proud to know that, like many other Brazilians, their grandfather was on the right side of history, convinced that he was participating in a collective struggle for a better Brazil -- generous, inclusive, just and prosperous, as the metalworkers wanted in the historic ABC strikes.

When I got my first job as a reporter at the Diário de Sorocaba newspaper, I left my activism, as was necessary. I criticized the PT (Workers' Party) when I had to, sometimes in a very harsh way.

But, in numerous reports that I have done and continue to do, I have seen that the construction of truly popular power depends on the actions of a party like the PT.

There were misguided candidates and governments, but seeing a woman carrying her child in the march in São Paulo reinforced my conviction that the struggles of 1979/1980 were not in vain. Better yet, they were absolutely necessary.