A video blog by http://revolution-news.com/
FIFA’s 50 billion dollar war on Brazilian people, started with the first worker oppressed, the first poor black person killed by police, the first indigenous forcefully evicted, the first teacher beaten by police, the first journalist or social activist attacked, the first protestor clubbed, the first kid in the favela murdered by state uniforms, the first sex worker raped by police, and the first child sold into sexual slavery.
The World Cup is for the rich, the cops are for the poor. It started with the first home stolen , with the first rent raised, with the first law changed for FIFA’s sponsors, with the first patient left to die at the hospitals’ doors, with the first worker killed in their stadiums.
“I don’t even want to look at this (at the biggest World Cup stadium in the world, at Maracana). Because every seat here could be a house to take a family out of a favelas or take in children at risk.” Behind the stadiums, is an industry ofchild sexual slavery and exploitation, as this documentary shows.
”The problem is civil obedience… The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with that metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.” — Howard Zinn
Homes were stolen from the poor so that stadiums and parking lots could be built. The worst state repression against poor is the least spoken of: 40,000 poor people have been gone missing from the militarized favelas; they are called Amarildo. Kids were killed with impunity in the favelas occupied, and militarized by police who later brag about their murders. “While there is no official record of the killing of children in the streets, a non-governmental organization said 121 known cases and a number of other episodes unprovable. “The tournament organizers and local people with great power in the country do not want tourists or international press to see the inequalities in Brazil, so groups hire hitmen to rid the streets of homeless people , “said one of the interviewed, in a documentary by a Danish journalist who exposed that homeless children living on the streets are killed so that “streets can be kept clean”.
Military police passing by a homeless man sleeping on the street, Rio de Janeioro, June 4th, 8 days before the World Cup. photo by Ruy Barros
The state’s criminality towards the poor has increased exponentially as hundreds of thousands, maybe 1 million all over Brazil, were evicted from their homes for FIFA’s stadiums and parking lots – which translate into huge profits made from public money by the capitalist class in Brazil and FIFA.
Under the pretext of the ”war on drugs,” the state has unleashed a ”pacification” process, based on the general criminalization of the working poor living in the favelas. Instead of recognizing its institutional racism, its own fascist policies, its own manipulations, its oppression towards the working poor, the state used its power to criminalize the poor and the socially abandoned, to dehumanize them and turn them into easy subjects of even more oppression. Poverty is widely feminized.
All residents of these poor communities were treated as criminals, because they were poor.
”Pacification” meant in fact exactly the opposite of this word: militarized gentrification and land grabs for the profits of the political class sponsors and for FIFA. Armed military police, and the state army – soldiers on tanks and helicopters armed with machine guns – invaded the communities according to the map of FIFA’s multi-billion dollar construction projects.
Defenseless people were attacked by armed troops, evicted at gun point, beaten, threatened, and shot at. This while sick people were literally dying on the floors of hospitals turned into war zones; poor kids were forced into prostitution to buy crayons for school; public transportation, utilities, rents and other costs of life skyrocketed so that profits can be easily made in the coming years from tourism. Houses became prohibitive for the working poor as they could no longer aford rents. The lack of other public services provokes nightmares for the local population when confronted with emergency situations.
FIFA is being rejected with hatred or indifference by 70 percent of the people living in Brazil; and even media in this country which support FIFA admit that cops are trained to inflict violence, that they go after people to attack, beat and cause them harm; they are trained to be violent and brutal; and they are utterly racist.
This video blog is trying to make the voices of the people living in Brazil be heard, and help them break through the commercial and the yelling of the football fans at the fancy stadiums in the middle of misery and human suffering; and also break the deafness of FIFA’s kings so they are aware of their inhumanity, rapacity, and outrageous behavior towards other human beings.
FIFA and their sponsors should be made to pay for all the suffering they have caused in Brazil, before they provoke more in Qatar, where their stadiums are built by slave work and where at least 4,000 people are expected to die working in the next 6 years for the rich’s multi-billion dollar game.
The resistance towards FIFA in Brazil started with the forced evictions and when the public learned that the cost for the cup will be 10 billion, then 30, then 50.
A year ago, 1.4 million people were on the streets to protest the cup, and to demand a decent chance at life. Passe livre livre protests against the rise of the public transport fares, and to support the elimination of transport fares, have been inspiring the struggle against capitalism in Europe, in the United States, and in Latin America. They have gone on relentlessly over the past year in Brazil. “Nao vai ter copa” (there will be no cup) also translated into “Nao vai ter tariffa” (there will be no transport ticket).
The state turned like a criminal against the population, since last year when the first peaceful protestors were attacked and beaten by mad cops. Civil disobedience became common sense.
Hear them out and see why this Cup is opposed, and why FIFA should be stopped.
Over 250,000 threatened with evictions; costs of the World Cup: 50 billion dollars: ”When the machines come to demolish dwellers despair”…
June 2012: ”They are evicted because they are poor,” a sarcastic documentary translated in English. On the way to the cup, the ball must be stopped.
March 2013 , the eviction of Maracana: ”thinking is a crime…”
June 15 2013: ”Without violence,” shouted people at the police. Cops shot at them, even at residents in the buildings for filming them.
Pampulha, June 2013: “No violence,” people shouted… It was already war...
Military police thugs attacked working poor families who occupied some land at the periphery of Sao Paulo and threatened to kill them.
They attacked peaceful people on May 16, 2014 in Sao Paulo, catching them off guard and wounding many of them.
Protestors resisted… and erected barricades. Cops understand only violence, so protestors had to defend themselves: Black Bloc appeared…
Black Bloc is a necessity.
photo by: Ruy Barros
Police attacked teachers when they went on strike and peacefully occupied the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro. Teachers were repeatedly attacked and beaten by police ”shock troops.” This is just an example, from September 29, 2013.
Cops attacked students and workers:
Police attacked workers on strike… Police were also caught in flagrant beating and arresting a social media journalist.
”Black Bloc do not beat professors,” shouted 50,000 teachers who took their strike on the streets, but this time BB defended them from the cops’s batons. Some profs became Black Bloc:
August 2013: ”I’m an American citizen. I’ve been here for 3 years, and this is how they do it? THIS is how they do it? Then, fuck them!”
The streets were just a replica of much worse violence police have been unleashing for decades in the favelas, the communities inhabited by the working poor. ”Pacification police” kill:
„Porque eu quis”, the face of the police in Brazil:
Cops kill and threaten the families of the victims to shut up: ”They’ve already threatened me, told me if they catch me at night on the street, said they will kill me.
They said they will kill my father if they catch him alone at night…. This is going to Youtube, man, we have to post this on Facebook and twitter…”
Homeless in the name of FIFA – this is one of the World Cup’s homeless: ”Anywhere people go, the government sends its military police to evict them with the use of force and violence. These people were occupying the sidewalk beside the city hall, fighting for their rights after being evicted from an occupation at a telephone company (named Oi) abandoned building. This is Brazil under a dictatorship in the name of mega-events…”
The is the real world cup:
“When authorities come here, they always tell us: ”If you don’t accept this offer, a tractor will come and destroy your home.”
But the favela will not be silent:
“Before the party”:
Home to 130,000, Mare was invaded and occupied by the state army at the end of March – to crush social resistance.
5,000 working homeless families were evicted at gunpoint from a public building Telerj: ”Dwellers that was sleeping was being awake with kicks in the face. They even took some merchandise from the people in there! Water, Beer, Styrofoam. They thrown us away like we were animals.” … Terror… “They destroyed everything.”
”Well, they took everything from us, we are showing that we need a place to live. While we don’t have a place to live, we will live here and there, everywhere.”
”They have no humanity. They are heartless .” “Today we suffered one of the biggest violence this city ever saw. This was one of the most violent evictions this town have ever lived. Today, each one of those that are here will never forget. It will be forever in our memory.” ”If Dilma have money to make Rio beautiful, why don’t she give us a place to live? We want house! We want a house!”
The song of the street captures the best the meaning of all their struggle:
„…Th
