PallasRiot on Nostr: Last year I got to listen to a speaker from the Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos do ABC, ...

Last year I got to listen to a speaker from the Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos do ABC, the metalworkers union that Lula da Silva came out of. For the unfamiliar, Brazil's democratic government was overthrown in 1964 and the country was ruled by military dictatorship for about 20 years, until basically 1985 (though Brazil didn't formally return to democracy until a couple years later when the new constitution was adopted). Trade unions were a vital part of overthrowing the dictatorship, and even a few years ago when a right-wing president tried to perform a self-coup after losing the election, trade unions once again provided a backbone of resistance that gave the elected government the power to actually take office and hold the would-be dictators to account.

The event I was at was a big union conference, and the speaker was both totally blunt with the American audience and also optimistic. He laid out plainly that the fight for democracy would mean getting as many people in civil society activated as possible, that people would need to take risks and suffer consequences, that authoritarianism will always lead to ever greater atrocities the longer it's allowed to go. But he was optimistic that the people of the United States could be roused. I often think about how he explained that you have to fight as early as possible, because no matter how hard the authoritarians crack down they will do worse down the road the more certain their power: what they're forced to do in the open as a reaction to resistance is never as bad as what they will do if they can act unseen and unopposed.

Members of SMABC have been sheltered at times by US unions. For all the faults of the history of the US labor movement and their role in US imperialism, the modern US unions are often more internationally minded. They have literally given protection and refuge for labor leaders from around the world being targeted by their governments at time, and some have projects to build unionization in areas of sweat shops and slave mines. That's a part of what this speaker saw as the hope of a roused US people: the imperfect and often unapologetic scions of imperialism who none the less, raised to believe in the virtues of liberty, strive to build a better world and by striving are made themselves into something better.