Paula Nunes: Deputy wants permanent opposition to Tarcísio – 03/09/2023 – Power

Criminal lawyer Paula Nunes, 29, is one of the crop of young politicians that emerged with the June 2013 Jornadas. of life”.

Elected to the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo with the feminist group of PSOL, the most voted collective candidacy in 2022, the state deputy grew up as one of the rare black women at the private school where she studied in the Tatuapé neighborhood, in the east zone of São Paulo.

She woke up to the social impact of racism at the university, where she was also one of the few non-scholarship black students. She says it was a shock to share the classroom with white students, while black workers were responsible for cleaning or securing the campus.

Paula takes office next Wednesday (15). In the collective mandate are also Carolina Iara, Simone Nascimento, Mariana Souza and Sirlene Maciel. Paula and Carolina had been in the collective mandate at the City Council of São Paulo for two years. In 2022, they received 259,700 votes.

In the Chamber, 12 proposals were approved, such as the implementation of a program to combat obstetric violence, a fund to combat hunger and the creation of a care service for people with disabilities in the municipal public network.

The main agenda of the young deputy is public safety, specifically the fight against the genocide of young black people. “From adolescence I understood that I lived a different reality than most black people,” she says.

She enjoyed the structure expected of a middle-class child: she devoted herself to her studies rather than to work, played sports and learned other languages. Daughter of an economist mother and a lawyer father, she was born in an economic context superior to that of her grandparents and other family members.

In high school, he got good grades and enjoyed studying. The racial issue appeared timidly, sometimes in the mother’s advice (“you need to be twice as good as the rest of the people”), sometimes in the prayers: “I remember asking, like, in conversation with God, why I had been born with this color, which was different from the others”.

“In some episodes, teachers questioned my ability, my intelligence, I have flashes of that. But, as a teenager, I hadn’t reflected on what that meant,” he says.

Firstborn with two brothers, she always lived with older people – she learned to read by herself and skipped a year of school. His first space for social action was the church. She commanded for years a group of young Catholics, who carried out charitable actions in vulnerable communities, orphanages and asylums.

Paula sees religion as a social assistance tool, but still adheres to some rituals, such as attending mass at the Rosário dos Homens Pretos da Penha Church, built by slaves in the 19th century and which remains intact in the same location.

Although elected with the banner of feminism, what seems to move her is the defense of the dignity of black youth.

It was in the Catholic group that he discovered his vocation. The festivals organized by her became major events in the east side, attracting fans and funk fans, several of whom were beginning to emerge on the São Paulo music scene.

In addition to getting in touch with music, the young woman was faced with lives and careers interrupted without justification. Like MC Daleste, a singer shot at a concert ten years ago. The murder investigation was concluded without naming a culprit.

“It was something that touched me a lot. I started to approach, from the black movement, with the mothers who had their children lost to police violence”, he says. “I came to understand that advocacy could be an instrument to guarantee the rights of this population, and criminal law became my theme.”

At university (she studied at PUC in São Paulo), she came into contact with the black and feminist movements, which she considered little different. “At PUC, I got to know a different type of wealth. It was when I understood that the bourgeoisie existed, because my colleagues had the last name of brands.”

She also joined the fight for the implementation of quotas in public universities and became involved in a committee against black genocide. “Based on these two axes, I understood that it was not enough just to fight for black people to enter the university. This would not be possible if black people were not alive”, she says.

His entire career, from then on, was guided by the defense of human rights. She interned with teenagers at Fundação Casa, worked at an international NGO and advocated for mothers whose children were murdered.

In order to organize his militancy with long-term strategies, he joined the PSTU in 2012, aged 19. A few months later came June 2013, a turning point for Paula and national politics.

“June showed me that it is possible to achieve success based on popular mobilization. I understood how important it was to place yourself in the world as a collective subject and I had the feeling of ‘this is what I want to do for the rest of my life’.”

Along with the victory against the ticket increase, came the foreshadowing of the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff (PT), which was decisive for her entry into the PSOL and for the rise in popularity of the dwarf party in the following years.

Faced with the rise of the right, a current in the PSTU became increasingly dissatisfied with the party’s oscillating position, which remained a left-wing opposition to the PT even at the height of the Dilma government crisis, “not calling impeachment a coup, for example”.

About a third of the party migrated to PSOL in 2017, including Paula.

She is part of the so-called Resistance current, which at the national level supports the Lula government, but defends the independence of the party in decision-making. “There are only 12 federal deputies, but one thing that PSOL knows how to do is mobilization”, she says.

The psolista attributes to this noise of the party the expressive vote that the bench received in October. With little resources, the campaign toured the state with a yellow Kombi, which stopped for more than 200 dialogue stalls.

The support of artists and influencers, such as Luísa Sonza, Emicida and Bruna Linzmeyer, helped boost the candidacy on social networks.

As a state deputy, Paula refutes the perception that Governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), elected with the support of the former president, is a mild Bolsonarist or “non-root”.

“I could even believe that if it weren’t for his nominations”, he says, referring to names like Guilherme Derrite, from Public Security, “an adorer of Olavo de Carvalho”, and Sonaira Fernandes, from the Women’s Secretariat, a former antagonist of the City Council for which feminism is the “branch office from hell”.

The caucus, naturally, was openly opposed to Councilwoman Sonaira in the Chamber.

“Our mandate will be a permanent pole of opposition”, says the elected official, who sees the collective candidacy as a stronghold to shelter social movements “against any attempt to implant Bolsonarism in the state of São Paulo”.

Nor does he hesitate when talking about the social and economic model he defends. “People think you shouldn’t talk about socialism anymore, but I have no problem talking about, that’s what I really believe in, equality and the pursuit of a classless society.”

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X-RAY | Paula Nunes, 29

She has been a member of PSOL since 2017. She is the legal representative of the collective mandate Bancada Feminista, elected to the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo. She was a cover artist in the capital of São Paulo in the same collective in 2020. Graduated in law from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, she has a specialization in economic criminal law from the University of Coimbra and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation. She was coordinator of the youth group at Santo Antônio de Lisboa Church, in Tatuapé, was a member of the 22 de Agosto Academic Center at PUC-SP and is active in the black and feminist movement. She advocates for human rights and has worked at the NGO Conectas.