The Workers' Party (PT) is debating the return of grassroots work, but what kind of grassroots work and with what kind of discourse?

Watching the debates between the candidates for the national presidency of the PT (Workers' Party) on social media, I am struck by the emphatic defense they all make of the vital need for the party to "return to its roots," resuming the social struggle alongside the daily lives of the people, which marked the party in the recent past.

They rightly emphasize the urgency for the party to once again combine occupying institutional spaces with participating in popular mobilizations for better living and working conditions.

However, I felt the lack of a more precise political contextualization in time and space, as is the case in discussions within the left as a whole on this subject.

The fact is that Brazil has changed completely in recent decades. And reconnecting with the foundations of society is far more complex than simply deciding to revitalize a political party and bring it back to its roots.

The crux of the problem is: return to what base, with what discourse, tactics, and strategy?

In the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, during the country's redemocratization period, activism was concentrated in labor unions, which were experiencing strong growth and influence on the national agenda; in neighborhood associations, which multiplied across the country and mobilized people to fight in an organized way for electricity, water, transportation, housing, etc.; and in the student movement, which, although it experienced its best moments in the fight against the dictatorship, still maintained some firepower. Proof of this was the leading role of the "painted faces" in the campaign for Collor's impeachment.

Today, unions have weakened in times of exacerbated individualism, app-based entrepreneurship, and targeted by a labor reform that has pulverized the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws). The student movement is a caricature of what it once was, and the organization of residents is a closed chapter in history.

In recent times, causes such as women's rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, the fight against racism, and environmental preservation have come to the forefront with a greater capacity to seduce and mobilize, especially young people. 

The social media revolution has impacted everyone's lives to the point of becoming a decisive instrument for both immediate political debate and winning hearts and minds, as well as being used for the most abject and nefarious purposes, as fascists do.

In the outlying neighborhoods, people don't care about collective struggles, and neo-Pentecostal churches find fertile ground to spread, becoming a religious-social-political phenomenon. In many of these communities, residents still have their lives strangled by drug traffickers and militias. 

The mega-challenge, therefore, is how to land in that territory to do "groundwork". 

This is a very complex debate.

But the favelas and other poor neighborhoods, on the other hand, are rich in popular culture, and this could be a way, a gateway for the left to engage in dialogue with this popular stratum.

Ultimately, the groups involved in baile funk, hip hop, pagode, and samba have more in common with left-wing worldviews than with right-wing ones.