Activism exploded, became pop and reached post-2013 politics – 06/10/2023 – Politics

There is a bit of June 2013 in every time a discussion of racism or harassment bursts into public debate. There are also remnants of that wave of demonstrations when the population unites to ask for the creation of a park or demand punishment for a corrupt politician.

The explanation given by researchers, politicians and leaders of social movements starts from a common point: the protests that swept the country ten years ago fermented an explosion of activism around the small and large flags, with repercussions in society and in spaces of power. .

Concepts such as horizontal leadership, diffuse agenda and collectivism came into play after the acts called by the MPL (Movimento Passe Livre). Other forms of action and organization also emerged, grew or changed, in a society that became more engaged and polarized.

“It was a turning point”, says political scientist Leandro Machado, author of the book “How to Defend Your Cause” (2021).

The emergence of this new moment has to do with the popularization of social networks and their ability to create opinion niches, in the opinion of Machado, who is also a partner at the consultancy Cause and co-founder of Agora!, a movement that emerged in 2016 to improve the policy and the government’s.

For the expert, left and right benefited from civic apotheosis, but the second group was more efficient in virtual mobilization. With the tactic, he captured the feeling of an empowered citizen with the possibility of using his cell phone to make himself heard without filters or middlemen.

“The indignation in 2013 only became collective thanks to the advent of social networks, because you share, one contaminates the other and this creates a wave. Politicians have become more sensitive to public opinion”, says lawyer Luciana Alberto, spokesperson for voice of VPR (Vem Pra Rua).

The movement took advantage of the spirit of the times, and mainly of Facebook, to gather crowds in the streets for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff (PT), alongside the MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre).

Groups that established themselves in the post-2013 period, however, refuted the horizontality (structure without rigid hierarchy and with decentralized power) adopted by the MPL and gave protagonism to the spokespersons.

“One thing that made all the difference to highlight the faces of our demonstrations was the use of sound trucks”, recalls Kim Kataguiri, one of the founders of MBL and since 2018 federal deputy (União Brasil). “Another distinction is that we had defined agendas.”

The jester for broadcasting messages during acts was initially copied from the MPL, but the tool was also abandoned by the MBL because of the growing volume of participants.

Consolidated in the impeachment and in the marches in support of Operation Lava Jato, taking to the streets as a method was incorporated into the Bolsonarist arsenal, with demonstrations of support for then-president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) being maintained even in the most restrictive phases of the Covid pandemic.

For sociologist Maria da Glória Gohn, a retired professor at Unicamp and a reference in studies of social movements in Brazil, 2013 rescued the impetus of conservative sectors for representation.

“More structured groups of the left experienced a certain disarticulation and, on the other hand, there was a significant advance of groups of the right and conservatives, who lost, as some said, shame and took to the streets, because before there were almost no protests from this field” , it says.

The proliferation of collectives of the most varied themes was another product of that period, in the researcher’s understanding, who scrutinized the phenomenon in books released in the last decade.

According to her, June bequeathed the rise of activism —more autonomous, with networking and valuing bodily experience in the defense of causes—, as opposed to the militancy model —made by movements and unions, with more vertical structures and predictable agendas.

Beatriz Della Costa, director of Update, an institute that encourages political innovations in the progressive area, says that there was “an activist awakening, with political and imaginary dispute”, including in the peripheries, accompanied by a profound behavioral change.

“Activism has gained a pop dimension. Today people ask: ‘What is your activism? Why do you fight?’ “, says the social scientist.

The risk, she considers, is that the attitude slips into “something unsustainable”, without regularity of action.

A major transformation was the gradual entry of left-wing activism into the institutional arena, observes Beatriz. “We take people who were formed in the street environment to the electoral dispute, in a movement for political minorities to occupy the spaces of power with more vigor.”

The most cited examples when talking about this environment include names with a feminist, anti-racist and LGBTQIA+ bias, in addition to avant-garde experiences such as the Bancada Activist, in São Paulo, and the Mulheres, in Belo Horizonte, with collective candidacies aligned with identity agendas.

For Josué Rocha, from the coordination of the MTST (Movement of Homeless Workers), June still serves as a warning for movements to preserve the connection with their bases. Something that has changed, in his view, is that summons via social networks no longer have the same power of influence.

“The open dissatisfaction in 2013 showed that there was room for social struggle, but it was important to organize it. It was then that the MTST decided to go for a more accelerated growth and that several other struggles were driven”, says he, also linked to the deputy Guilherme Boulos (PSOL).

The adverse situation for the left in recent years, with the need to resist the conservative agenda, helped the movements to regain part of their dynamism, points out Rocha, recalling the weight of this field for the election of President Lula (PT).

Athayde Motta, who directs Abong (Brazilian Association of NGOs, with 236 entities), relativizes the impact of the June days on the sector and recalls that the MPL has not perpetuated itself as a relevant force.

For the anthropologist, as the decentralized and dispersed form of action proved to be ephemeral, the classic means of pressure —such as institutional dialogue for public policies and protests with clear objectives— were strengthened. “That was an expression of legitimate popular outrage, not a reference to a relevant period of civil society organization,” he says.

“With the criminalization of movements in the government [Michel] Temer and the persecution in the Bolsonaro government, people gained a gas to protest. All this helped society to understand that participating is good for democracy.”