Andrea Werner: Deputy is the voice of people with disabilities – 03/08/2023 – Power

“Why get elected? To get popular on Twitter with people on the left or to make a difference in my voter’s life?” The elected state deputy Andrea Werner (PSB) uses this reflection as a reminder since she won a seat at Alesp (Legislative Assembly of São Paulo).

Activist for causes of people with disabilities and former member of the PSOL, the new parliamentarian has been thinking about the style she will adopt in the political game: whether more belligerent, as her stridency draws attention on social networks, or conciliatory.

Before the mandate, which begins on the 15th, he already bought two fights against the Tarcísio de Freitas government (Republicans). Both had a positive outcome, with no accusations being exchanged on the internet.

“Screaming is valid, yes, but at times you get more things the other way. I started testing the dose”, he says.

Andrea helped mobilize protests for the recreation of the Secretariat for Persons with Disabilities, extinct in the first version of the government structure, and caught the attention of Tarcísio when he vetoed a bill that proposed indefinite validity for reports that attested to autism spectrum disorder.

The government’s argument even said that autism in children could pass — it was one of the first self-declared mistakes by the Tarcísio administration.

“That doesn’t exist, Governor. The child can improve, acquire social skills and a lot of autonomy, so that he doesn’t even seem to be autistic. But he will continue to be autistic”, said the deputy on video.

The Executive backtracked.

The governor recanted on social media (“Erramos”, he wrote) and Andrea received a call from the Health Department with an apology, and the justification that the project had been shelved since 2020. A meeting was scheduled in the following days and “the ports in the folder are open”.

Elected with 88,700 votes, Andrea is quoted to assume the presidency of the Commission for Persons with Disabilities at Alesp. The biggest bottleneck in the sector, according to her, is not the absence of laws, but the lack of supervision over those that already exist.

“If the laws we already have were complied with, with schools prepared for students with disabilities and mediators trained inside the classrooms, we would be in paradise”, he says.

Despite being new to institutional politics, the 47-year-old journalist is an important voice in the cause of people with disabilities, especially autism. She is the mother of Theo, 14, diagnosed with the disorder at 2.

Last year, he militated against the so-called exhaustive list. A decision by the Superior Court of Justice had reduced obligations to finance medicines and treatments by health plans. The measure would bring a series of losses to people with rare diseases.

Andrea and other family members of patients handcuffed themselves in protest in front of the court. Afterwards, they articulated around a bill to end the exhaustive list. Reported by Senator Romário (PL-RJ), it was approved and became law in September, overcoming the operators’ lobby.

“The parliamentarians already knew who I was because I denounced on social networks everyone who was articulating with health plans. I worked with big people and I became feared in Congress”, he says.

Even a video apology to the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), she recorded at the suggestion of allies.

His firm speeches tried to embarrass parliamentarians.

“Some senators are candidates, and others are reasonably calm, as they will only run for re-election four years from now. However, people, a mother will never forget the name and face of someone who tried to take her child’s oxygen , not in 50 years”, he said in an act in the Senate, on the eve of the election.

During that time, she received several hateful and intimidating messages. It’s what makes her recalculate her communication strategy now that she’s a deputy.

One of the first people to notice Andrea as a potential politician was state deputy Carlos Giannazi (PSOL). After seeing her at a seminar at Alesp in 2018, he invited her to run for federal deputy that same year.

“She made a good intervention, full of data. She is very prepared”, says Giannazi. “I explained how the PSOL worked to see if she would like to join a confrontational, combat party that does not form alliances”, recalls the deputy. She thought for a bit and agreed.

Andrea has always aligned herself more to the left, but says she “left for good” around 2016, when she lived in Sweden.

“Seeing a man pushing a baby stroller alone on the street pisses anyone off, right? I once saw three men at a small table in a cafe, each with their baby carriage beside them. It was an unforgettable scene.”

In Sweden, men share parental leave with women, which is 480 days – they are obliged to take at least three months. In Brazil, leave for parents is five consecutive days.

With PSOL, Andrea was in the second substitute for federal deputy, with about 43 thousand votes. Two years later, she applied for a position as councilor in the São Paulo City Council. Without getting the second election, she wanted to leave politics.

Directed efforts to create the Instituto Lagarta Vira Pupa, for the inclusion and support of people with disabilities and their families. The institute (whose name comes from a children’s song on the program “Cocoricó”) is the continuation of the work she has been developing since 2012, when she launched a blog of the same name to write about the experience of being an atypical mother.

“With the blog, I started to receive a lot of contact from mothers, very personal reports, and I noticed that there was nothing on the subject for them on the internet at that time”, she says. She also released two children’s books on the subject and became an opinion maker on TV, appearing on programs such as Fátima Bernardes and Pedro Bial.

From Minas Gerais, middle class, with a participatory husband and private health plan, Andrea came across poor single mothers, whose children depended on the SUS, barely getting a diagnosis and access to therapy.

“It was my social awakening. Mothers of people with disabilities kill themselves for lack of public policy. In December 2020, there were three. We need to improve support for these families.”

Andrea left PSOL in 2021, a year after failing to get the position of councilwoman. After a meeting with Márcio França (Minister of Ports and Airports), linked to the PSB agenda, she changed caption.

“Professor Lucia [França], his wife, is deeply connected to the agenda. He promised me support too. Within PSOL, I was kind of lost, the person who didn’t come from the student movement, from the free pass, which became politicized late “, she says.

Some principles should guide her in the mandate, such as the fight against “poor people” and political charlatanism around the agenda. “We have to face this caricature of special school segregation, the story of ‘money to the institution that is helping the poor things,'” she says.

She defends the maintenance of specialized schools (such as Apae) because, sometimes, it is the only support network for women who raise their children alone. In the long run, however, it wants to ensure that all schools are able to receive students with disabilities, and that they are integrated.

“The cause has been seen with opportunism. There was a lot of this in the election, people running for autistic people and for the defense of animals. What is the relationship between one thing and the other? Only the one that gives a vote”, he says. “Without mentioning names”, asks the reporter, not to attack anyone.

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X-RAY | Andrea Werner, 47

She is a journalist, from Minas Gerais and a state deputy in São Paulo for the PSB. Atypical mother, she has been an activist for the rights of people with disabilities for about ten years. She has already been a member of PSOL and ran for federal deputy, in 2018, and councilor for São Paulo, in 2020. She is the author of two children’s books and has become a prominent voice for mothers and families of autistic people with the blog Lagarta Vira Pupa, created in 2012 to share experiences about his son Theo. She created an institute of the same name, dedicated to supporting families of people with disabilities.