Let the class struggle begin.

I started reading about politics when I was 14. It was 1973. My family subscribed to Estadão. I always saw my grandfather, grandmother, and mother devouring those white pages with black letters, and I wondered what those enormous texts contained that held their attention so much. Especially the first section. Then one day, I ventured into a type of reading that I would never abandon.

The first time I saw the expression "class struggle" was in the aforementioned newspaper. Since about forty years have passed since then, I can't say for sure if it was in an article, an editorial, a news report, or a letter to the editor. However, it was used in the context of being undesirable – the "communists" were accused of promoting conflict between the poor and the rich.

It seems like it was just yesterday…

Throughout my life, class struggle has always been presented to me by the press and certain political groups as a tragedy for a nation, whereas scientific socialists argued the opposite.

It took me a while to accept that improving the living conditions of workers would only happen through class struggle, because I couldn't separate it from armed struggle, which I repudiated. I had always leaned more towards the bourgeois ideas of utopian socialists, that social transformation would happen peacefully.

Because of this mindset, I stayed away from politics during the dictatorship. However, because I always kept myself informed – even when girls and parties were more important – I always knew that the way the country was governed was wrong. Especially since my family, influenced by Estadão (a Brazilian newspaper), gradually changed their opinion about the regime they had once supported, as did the newspaper, throughout those dark years.

All this preamble was necessary to get to the central point of this text: the much-feared class struggle, which once helped to deepen the military dictatorship, can now be waged without armed struggle, through political struggle unleashed from the bottom up, as we are beginning to see happen.

The proletarian revolution, in fact, is proving to be a matter of time in this country – although I hope it unfolds politically, without violence, but knowing that it will happen one way or another.

Since last December, there have been signs that a class conflict is getting closer. And what's more: it hasn't happened sooner only because of the strong social inclusion policies of the Lula-Dilma era. In this respect, the elite should applaud the two Labor presidents who, with their social programs, managed to delay the boiling over of the social cauldron.

And when I mention "signs of an imminent class clash," I'm referring to the utterly disorganized and ideology-free social movement known as "rolezinho."

The thousands of teenagers who have been going to the temples of consumerism of the middle and upper classes, to the so-called "shopping malls," are the most evident expression of the growing discontent with inequality on the part of its victims, a feeling that is emerging among these social strata, now inspired by the winds of political and ideological freedom that more than two decades of democracy have brought.

Society's reaction to the abuses of state repressive forces, which today no longer find room for the total impunity of the past due to the phenomenon of the democratization of social communication generated by the internet, will be inevitable and beneficial as long as democracy remains preserved.

Unless someone believes in yet another coup to silence once again the cry of discontent that poverty has kept trapped in their throats for so long.

In this context, a positive fact emerges. However much we repudiate the status quo, it cannot be denied that the mainstream press played a fundamental role in denouncing the abuses against the boys and girls participating in the "rolezinhos" (mass gatherings of young people in shopping malls). And not only the military police, but also the Justice system, which gave a bizarre permission for shopping malls to screen those entering them based on skin color, clothing, and other subjective factors that denoted poverty.

The press, therefore, has not ceased to be conservative, but is finding itself compelled by the abundant and uncontrollable flow of information not to be left behind by events.

More than two decades of democracy and the advent of the internet have created the ideal environment for legions of victims of Brazilian inequality to increasingly denounce their oppressors. And the "rolezinhos" (mass gatherings of young people in shopping malls) are an expression of this phenomenon.

Of course, it was inevitable that here and there, among lawyers and jurists, journalists and many other exponents of the white elite of Indo-European descent, the absurd discourse about the "private" nature of shopping malls would emerge—a discourse defending a constitutionally nonexistent right for merchants to select customers who can or cannot enter these public spaces.

They are mistaken. Businesses open to the public operate on the condition that they are open to the public, that is, to everyone, without discrimination based on social class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or ideology.

Furthermore, discrimination in retail is a crime.

The "rolezinho" (a type of social gathering), therefore, is a right as long as it doesn't devolve into violence or crime. And preventing someone from frequenting a place on the premise that their appearance suggests they might commit vandalism, theft, or any other type of crime is pure fascism.

This movement of young people, therefore, in the view of this writer, is absolutely legitimate. Facts and investigations have revealed to me that it bears no relation to the violent and political protests that erupted across the country starting in June of last year and which now aim to sabotage the World Cup.

This is a spontaneous movement that could fulfill the civic function of exposing the hypocritical inequality that plagues Brazil – and thus, the function of provoking change.

The "rolezinhos," therefore, are not related to the so-called "June protests," but to the first occupation of a shopping mall in very recent history. In 2000, a group of homeless people occupied one of these temples of consumption and, in doing so, laid the groundwork for a process that needs to occur in Brazil: rubbing the unsustainable inequality in the face of the elite who benefit from it.

Before reaching the conclusion of this text, therefore, if you haven't already, it's highly recommended to watch the documentary Hiato, reproduced below. It reveals the origins of the "rolezinhos" (mass gatherings of young people in shopping malls). The text continues afterward.

 

What you witnessed above, reader, was the embryo of the "rolezinhos" (mass gatherings of young people in shopping malls) that are now erupting in São Paulo and that tend to spread throughout the country, if society knows how to react to the repression.

The “class struggle” through this means – and through other similar means that may arise – therefore, not only needs to continue but must be intensified. Without violence, but with firmness. We must show reality to this delusional elite that believes it can confine such an overwhelming majority within the ghettos it has created for itself.

The thousands who have occupied and will occupy shopping malls and other elite havens may make the elite understand that if they don't accept income redistribution willingly, they may have to accept it unwillingly. And not because of any politically organized movement, but because of the waning patience of the masses, who, disregarding intermediaries and any organization, are instinctively demanding equality.