{"id":63502,"date":"2021-01-12T10:06:30","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T13:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=63502"},"modified":"2021-07-08T16:01:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T19:01:28","slug":"a-pact-among-organizations-in-the-brazilian-black-movement-the-black-coalition-for-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=63502","title":{"rendered":"Brazil’s Black Coalition for Rights: A Pact Across the Brazilian Black Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This is the first article in a series of three on Brazil’s Black Coalition for Rights<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not born black, we become black. It is a hard, cruel understanding that one develops out in the world. A black person who is conscious of their blackness is in the fight against racism.\u201d – L\u00e9lia Gonzalez<\/em><\/h4>\n

If the majority of the country is black\u2014with almost 54% identifying as black or brown<\/a>, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics<\/a>, making Brazil the second-largest black nation, only after Nigeria\u2014why are black people not represented in spaces of power? Why are organizations from the Brazilian black movement not considered voices to be heard in nation-building projects? Why are only 17.8% of parliamentarians in the National Congress black or brown<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The answer lies in the structural and secular racism present in Brazilian society, which, in spite of an established democracy, does not guarantee access to rights for the majority of its population, which is black.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a country which we must dispute. And it’s not a dispute over narrative. We do not live in a democracy. Since democracy is the practice of listening to the majority\u2014but we have a majority that has never been heard (the black population)\u2014it is obvious that we do not live in a democracy,\u201d says Douglas Belchior, 41. Belchior is co-founder of UNEafro Brasil<\/a>, one of the 150 entities that form the Black Coalition for Rights,<\/a> which penned the manifesto \u201cAs Long As There is Racism, There Will Be No Democracy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we think of democracy as a social agreement guaranteeing citizens’ rights, we still do not live in a democracy, since most of the population has never had their full rights and citizenship respected. We, in the black movement, are always aware of this, because it is obvious in our lives and in our bodies,\u201d says Belchior. The Black Coalition for Rights demands, in its manifesto, \u201cthe eradication of racism as a genocidal practice against the black population.\u201d<\/p>\n

With\u00a046 public documents<\/a>\u00a0that propose policies for the country from the perspective of the organized black movement\u2014but including all Brazilians, black, white, brown, and indigenous\u2014the Black Coalition for Rights has existed for nearly two years, representing different voices\u00a0from the organized black movement such as black women; favela residents; people from urban peripheries; LGBTQIA +; Catholics; evangelicals; those who follow religions of African origin; quilombolas (descendants of enslaved Africans who remain on their ancestral lands); people from the countryside, water, and forest; and workers who are exploited, informal, and unemployed, all in coalition to form a pact against the practical consequences of structural racism<\/a> in Brazil.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe coalition is not and will never be just an organization. It is an exercise in building a path together. It only exists through our collective action. It does not have an office, a headquarters, nor is this on the horizon. What exists is the movement’s collective political action,\u201d explains Belchior. The Black Coalition for Rights has been fighting racism and violations of the right to life, denouncing human rights violations in Brazil.<\/p>\n

When the country reached 100,000 deaths from Covid-19<\/a>, the Black Coalition for Rights filed the 56th request for impeachment against Jair Bolsonaro<\/a>, on August 12, which included 11 complaints against the president. The document was signed by 150 organizations that make up the group, with support from another 600 entities, in addition to signatures from public artists, intellectuals, and activists. Three months later, Brazil was close to reaching 167,455 deaths (on November 19) from the pandemic, which presented an upward trend and indicated the beginning of a second wave of infections in the country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBrazil finds itself in front of a mirror that reflects all its evils. And the only hope that is possible as a counterpoint to this white, old, rich, heterosexual, cisgender face that occupies the top of the social pyramid and most spaces of power is in the transformative potential of women, men, youth and LGBTQI +, favela residents and people from the peripheries, quilombolas and ribeirinhos (river communities), imprisoned and homeless people, who are black, who make up the majority of the Brazilian people,\u201d declares the Coalition on its online platform<\/a> for principles and agenda, on November 28, 2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given Brazil’s police violence, which kills a black person every 23 minutes\u2014according to a Senate committee’s investigative report<\/a> on the Murder of Youth based on data from the Map of Violence<\/a>\u2014for months, the Coalition has denounced that as long as there is racism, there will be no democracy<\/a>. \u201cThere are sectors in society that have distanced themselves from this reality all their lives, and so it is not obvious to them\u2026 that this democracy is not a reality for most. And I say that even including the progressives that are concerned with reality in a more general sense,\u201d emphasizes Belchior.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Black Genocide: 75% of Murders in Brazil<\/h3>\n

Agatha Felix<\/a>, Eduardo de Jesus<\/a>, Maria Eduarda<\/a>, Jonathan Oliveira<\/a>, Maicon de Souza<\/a>, Jo\u00e3o Pedro,<\/a> Jo\u00e3o Vitor<\/a>, Iago Cesar<\/a>, Rodrigo Cerqueira<\/a>, Carlos Alberto, Carlos Magno, Everson Gon\u00e7alves, Thiago da Costa<\/a>, Viviane Rocha, Cristiane Souza Leite, Rosana Lima de Souza<\/a>. What do all these names have in common? All of these people were murdered in\u00a0police operations<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas, and make up part of the statistics on the Brazilian black genocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among those murdered in Brazil, 75.5% are black<\/a>, according to the Atlas of Violence. Research by Rio de Paz<\/a>\u00a0shows that between 2016 and 2019, 91% of children killed<\/a> by \u201cstray bullets\u201d in Rio de Janeiro were black.<\/p>\n

\u201cGENOCIDE<\/a> is the deliberate extermination of people, motivated by ethnic, national, racial, religious and, sometimes, socio-political differences. In Brazil, it is the result of the racism that shapes the State and society, which affects the police, corporations, political institutions, and the population as a whole,\u201d the Coalition campaign<\/a> denounced.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As part of the Brazilian black genocide, black lives are also interrupted every day in the\u00a0necropolitical<\/a> games that curtail access to rights, without us ever knowing their names. These realities are reinforced by the economic and social inequalities<\/a> of the coronavirus<\/a> pandemic. While newspapers asked people to sanitize their hands, favela residents, who are mostly black, denounced the lack of access to water<\/a>\u00a0and lack of ability to self-isolate<\/a> in order to prevent the disease’s contagion.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrazil is a country with a historical and current debt to its black people. Therefore, any project toward or attempt at democracy in the\u00a0country\u00a0requires a firm and real commitment to fighting racism. We call on the democratic sectors of Brazilian society, the institutions and people that today say they are disgusted by the evils of racism and who claim to be anti-racist: be consistent. Practice what you preach. Join us in this manifesto, in our historic and permanent resistance initiatives, and in the proposals we defend in order to build democracy, organized in our platform,\u201d says the manifesto As Long As There is Racism, There Will Be No Democracy<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The manifesto was launched in June 2020, in the context of increasing anti-racist struggle worldwide, after the murder of George Floyd<\/a> by a white police officer kneeling on his neck. It includes signatures of prominent Brazilian artists, intellectuals, activists, and public figures, in addition to 150 other institutions within the black movement including Uneafro, Criola, Movimento Moleque<\/a>, Justi\u00e7a Global<\/a>, Rede Contra a Viol\u00eancia<\/a>, Voz da Baixada<\/a> and the Marielle Franco Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most conservative elite knows that democracy does not exist for everyone, and that the system oppresses black people, but they maintain this false logic of democracy as a strategic project. Our manifesto is a reclaiming of the obvious, because in Brazil, the obvious needs to be fought for. That\u2019s why we organize ourselves so strikingly, in a coalition, to demand coherence from those who say they care about democracy, because whoever cares about democracy needs to be concerned with the racism that objectively impedes the exercise of democracy,\u201d says Belchior, a member of the Black Coalition for Rights, which has forty-six active WhatsApp groups.<\/p>\n

According to Google<\/a>, searches for \u201cthe persistence of racism in Brazil\u201d grew more than 5,000% from 2019 to 2020. Furthermore, \u201cprivilege\u201d was searched at an all-time high in June 2020, followed by the search for \u201cwhat is racism?\u201d, which received the most searches of any point in the last five years. The number of searches for \u201cVidas Negras Importam,<\/em>\u201d \u201cVidas Pretas Importam,<\/em>\u201d “what is Black Lives Matter,” and “Black Lives Matter translation” was greater than ever. The data are part of a survey by Google Trends.<\/p>\n

In light of these figures, and racism scandals across the United States, Google launched the film \u201cSearching for Racial Justice<\/a>\u201d along with a letter pledging to combat racism within the company itself:<\/p>\n