By Emir Sader on April 21, 2021
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
How often have we looked to Lula for hope? Hoping that the heroic strike would bring down the dictatorship! Hoping that the transition would truly bring democracy to Brazil! Hoping that he would defeat Collor! Hoping that he would enable Brazil to free ourselves from the Cardoso government and its neoliberal model!With hope that his government would truly be for all, but above all for the most needy! With hope that he could decrease the inequalities in the most unequal country of the most unequal continent in the world! Hoping that he could restore the image of Brazil in the world! Hoping that he could restore the economic growth and create the employment so badly needed by the people of Brazil. Hoping that Brazilians would again be proud to be Brazilian!
With hope that his imprisonment would serve to establish his innocence! Hoping for him to be freed and to walk out of the door of the Federal Police of Curitiba! Hoping that he would emerge to embrace all those men and women who had maintained a vigil, guarding him for 540 days and nights!
With hope that he would return to the Metal Workers Union to speak again for all! Hoping that he should recover all his rights! Hoping that those jackals who thought that they had excluded him from the political life of Brazil would be unmasked and exposed! Hoping that Power of the Law would recognize exactly what Lula had been denouncing for so long!
And Lula never disappointed us; he always fulfilled our hopes. And what does Lula call us to do now? First, before anything else, to help overcome hunger and the viral pandemic. To recover from the defeats that has done so much damage to the spirits of the people. To again show that another Brazil is possible. To a return to full confidence in the struggles of the people, knowing that it is possible to do much more than we ever imagined.
To the knowledge, once and for all, that all fights for justice ultimately are victorious. That we can only win with unity. That we have to put aside all the little differences that separate us, in order to join together around all the many things that unite us. So that we may know how to grow during a crisis and not let ourselves be distracted by soul-killing little resentments.
Lula is calling for the return of hope. Hope of defeating genocide, of triumphing over hunger and of overcoming the virus.
Lula is calling for the restoration of democracy in Brazil, because only with democracy can the will of the majority rule. Because only in a democracy can all men and women speak, both for themselves and for others. Because only in a democracy can all women and men organize freely.
Lula is calling for us to rescue Brazil, so that it will again become a country that generates and distributes income, a country where nobody is left helpless and abandoned. A country where there are no people who live and sleep in the streets. A country where no child goes to sleep hungry. A country where all children have schools, where all regions of the country have universities. A country where all mothers and fathers can watch their children grow in a better world. A country where all can again live with hope.
Lula calls us all to struggle, to travel throughout Brazil, speaking and listening to the people. Lula calls us to be present in the reality of this desperate modern-day Brazil, so that together we can again have hope.
Lula calls us all together to give the best of ourselves, so that all may be able to develop their full humanity, their solidarity, their empathy, their desires to work especially for those who are most defenseless and most needy.
Lula is calling us to hope. For all to rise to the heights of the challenges and the circumstances. Because the very life of Lula is a story of hope, that triumphs over death, over hopelessness; hope that overcomes all obstacles, even those that seemed insurmountable. Lula calls us to hope, to the hope of again having a Brazil with hope, with life, with justice, and with solidarity.
Emir Sader, a Brazilian sociologist and political scientist, is Coordinator of the Public Policy Laboratory of the Sate University of Rio de Janeiro. (Laboratorio de Políticas Públicas de la Universidad Estadual de Rio de Janeiro – UERJ).
Source: Alainet, translation Resumen Latinoamercano – English