{"id":58297,"date":"2020-03-14T11:46:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-14T14:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=58297"},"modified":"2020-03-14T12:19:25","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T15:19:25","slug":"the-words-of-marielle-franco-love-and-dedication-to-justice-and-the-favela-2yearswithoutmarielle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=58297","title":{"rendered":"The Words of Marielle Franco: Love and Dedication to Justice and the Favela #2YearsWithoutMarielle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On the day that marks the two-year anniversary of the brutal assassination of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco<\/a>, born and raised in the favelas of Mar\u00e9<\/a>, RioOnWatch pays homage to the iconic councillor, gathering some of her most emblematic quotations. The selection below demonstrates her unshakeable dedication to the favelas, to social justice, and to the fight against racism and misogyny. To this day, the crime remains unsolved.<\/em><\/p>\n

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“The favela is not the problem. The favela is the city. The favela is the solution.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014 on the Cidade Partida (Divided City) program<\/a> on\u00a0Canal Brasil<\/em><\/a>. Franco argued that the favela was an essential and constituent part of the city, just as she fought for equal services and treatment in the favelas in comparison to the rest of the city.<\/p>\n

“Mar\u00e9 is a place that should be treated and developed not as the periphery, but as a neighborhood of the city, [one that] has access to transportation, circulation, organization, economic processes, and entrepreneurs.”<\/h3>\n

“We don’t want social rights only after the war on drugs ends or drug trafficking ends. As citizens of the city and citizens of the favela, we want them today.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014 from a series of debates<\/a> at the Museu da Mar\u00e9, March 2017<\/p>\n

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“Federal interventeur General Braga Netto declared that ‘Rio de Janeiro is a laboratory for Brazil.’ And what we see is that in this ‘laboratory,’ the guinea pigs are black, from the periphery, from the favelas, workers. People’s lives cannot serve as an experiment for security models.”<\/h3>\n

“[The] characterization of the favelas, as places of danger, of fear, that spreads through the city, evokes the myth of dangerous classes […] placing the favela as object and public enemy number one.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014 a selection from her thesis<\/a>: “UPP – the Reduction of the Favela to Three Letters: An Analysis of Public Security Policy in the State of Rio de Janeiro,\u201d September 2014, Fluminense Federal University (UFF<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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“The cycle of a racist society: while another poor black youth is arrested for merely existing, another poor black mother suffers in solitude.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014 Twitter<\/a>, April 2017<\/p>\n

“To be a black woman is to resist and survive at every moment… [they] look at our bodies and diminish us, checking to see if there are drugs or lice beneath our headwraps; they deny our existence.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014\u00a0in an interview<\/a> with\u00a0Brasil de Fato<\/em> as part of the Global Women’s Journey in March 2017<\/p>\n

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“The black body is a central element in the reproduction of inequalities. It’s in the overfilled prisons, in the favelas and peripheries designated as shelter.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014\u00a0in an op-ed for<\/a>\u00a0O Globo\u00a0<\/em>in December 2017<\/p>\n

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“It is necessary to break with the normalization of sexual assault during carnival.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014\u00a0in an op-ed piece for\u00a0O Globo<\/em><\/a> in February 2018. Franco also proposed an anti-sexual assault bill<\/a> (PL 417\/2017) to create a permanent awareness-raising and confrontation campaign against assault and sexual violence in public transport and public spaces in Rio.<\/p>\n

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“The roses of resistance are born in the asphalt. We receive roses, but we will be with our fists clenched speaking of our existence against the push and pull that affects our lives.”<\/h3>\n

\u2014 spoken at a pronouncement<\/a> for International Women’s Day on the floor of Rio City Council, in March 2018. This was her last public pronouncement in March 2018. Franco reflected constantly on strategies to combat misogyny, surrounding herself with women to support their increasingly occupying spaces of political power.<\/p>\n