Brazil: Protest on 1st May raises a symbol of classism and internationalism in Marabá
We publish an unofficial translation of an article of A Nova Democracia
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the center of Marabá to mark 1st of May as a day of struggle.
On 1st of May, International Proletariat Day, a unified event took place in Marabá. In front of unit 1 of the Federal University of the South and Southeast of Pará (Unifesspa), students, teachers, trade unionists and representatives of popular movements gathered for the demonstration.
First, the protesters gathered for breakfast, and then, people occupied the well-known VP-08 avenue in front of the institution with banners.
While an agitation committee remembered the history of the date, the memory of the five Chicago worker heroes who led a brutally repressed strike in 1886, other activists denounced the situation of public education and the living conditions of the people in the countryside and in the city.
“Everyone here is worker, everyone here is committed to public service. We are teachers, administrative technicians, urban planners, we are those who maintain this nation with our work. Those who lift everything in this world. Nothing exists without the worker. Anything. From cell phones to motorcycles. From pants to boots. From car to glasses. Everything is a product of our work. The worker does not have the recognition that he owns. Against oppression, workers celebrate 1st of May every year to remember the struggle of the Chicago martyrs, saying that we will only stop fighting when we build a just society where no one is a victim of the greed and oppression of any other subject. Long live the workers’ struggle!”
Another group had banners about union demands and spread leaflets to cars, motorcycles and passersby.
The leaflet highlights the cuts in resources for education, health and the area of science and technology. “All this to meet the goals of the new Fiscal Framework of the Lula government, a kind of cover for the so-called spending ceiling in which public service expenses are controlled and the resources collected are diverted to the payment of so-called public debts and rentiers.” said one demonstrator.
He also stated that the situation could worsen without these resources and that “the economic model and the old policy are oriented towards favoring large fortunes and enterprises focused on the exploitation of raw materials, agricultural products and financialisation”, he said, which concluded by calling to support this important strike by public workers in the federal education network.
The Support Committee for the Newspaper A Nova Democracia – Marabá was present covering the event and agitation surrounding this historic date of the international proletariat. It was solidarity and committed to publicizing class struggles in the country and around the world, such as the Palestinian resistance, strikes in education and peasant struggles. In the southeast of Pará, in the month of April more than five thousand peasants occupied land and this shows the power and degree of effervescence of struggle in this territory.
According to the evaluation of the representative of the Teachers’ Union of the South and Southeast of Pará, the act was marked by classism and internationalism, in addition to opposing the large unions that refuse to make 1st of May a day of popular struggle.
A spontaneous graffito on the external wall of Unifesspa was made in defense of the heroic Palestinian resistance, which has continued for more than 200 days facing day after day the genocidal thirst of the Zionist state of Israel in collusion with North American imperialism.
