After so many weeks of hearing from Brazilians about how complacent their fellow countrymen are about civic involvement, it was good to hear that someone was organizing a protest march against the violence we've been seeing lately in Jardins. I showed up last night at the meeting spot -- the corner of Rua da Consolação and Alameda Itu, a few blocks up from the spot where John Clayton Moreira Batista was murdered a week ago, and a few blocks over from where Gregor Landouar was knifed to death on the day of the Gay Pride parade.
There were a lot of positive things about this march. I counted about 75 people at the starting point, and the crowd grew to over 200 during the march. It was organized by the Pride organization, and was ably led and remained peaceful and defiant throughout. They handed out literature with instructions on how to file a police report if you are attacked (something, apparently, gays are not doing when they're bashed) and with resources on who to turn to in case of anti-gay discrimination. The leaders also called for passage of hate crimes legislation.
However, what also became clear was that this march had little to do with the two murders that just took place in Jardins. Instead, it was an astute (and welcome) exploitation of the media attention around those murders by the gay activists to promote their effort to awaken the gay community (albeit, on the other side of Avenida Paulista, in Bela Vista) to the importance of taking the appropriate steps when they are assaulted or discriminated against. It was a gay march, period. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
The march did not, as I thought it would, stop at the two crime scenes of recent nights here in Jardins, nor did it even stay here. It immediately moved up Rua Bela Cintra and across Paulista, and down the Bela Vista side of Rua Augusta to the far-off Centro area. This took it through the more working-class neighborhood where young gays live three and four to an apartment, and where I understand a lot of anti-gay incidents occur but get little attention, mostly because the victims don't take action. And far away from where the skinhead murders are happening.
I was struck by the diversity of gays and lesbians in the crowd - it wasn't all hard-bit radicals,
although they were in there. But there were teenagers and old-timers, and a couple of trannies as well. There were lots of people who knew each other, probably from being activists, and they had a camaraderie that was comforting. It says that there are people who consistently do this sort of thing, and are conscious of the importance of street activism as a means of getting attention and vocalizing community needs in a direct, peaceful manner. That was heartening. I expected more than a few hundred people in a city of 18 million, especially after the gigantic pride parade. But activism is never easy.
Walking down old Augusta into Bela Vista was an interesting journey for me. I haven't walked there probably since 1985, when it was the chic boulevard for shops and nightlife. It sure ain't that anymore. We marched past what was once the Caesar Park Hotel, where Madonna famously spent the night during her last tour stop in Brazil in the early 1990s. That former luxury spot is now an abandoned ghost building, and the street is a seedy and dangerous place where by-the-hour motels, strip clubs, low-rent apartment blocks and low-price gyms are crammed together in various states of disrepair. Many gay Brazilians who migrate from the poorer Northeast of the country to São Paulo land in Bela Vista.
The tension on the street during the march was very evident. The protesters stopped at one particular pizza joint and started chanting and pointing at the people inside, and one person told me it's a notorious place for routinely discriminating against gay and lesbian patrons. The manager came forward (not seen in the video) to see what the commotion was, and had a sneering expression that could only have been more stereotypically villainous with a little moustache twirl and shaking of a fist. The kids over there need help, and I'm glad there is an effort to help them and I support it.
But I was disappointed, too, that the names of the recently murdered were never uttered, and despite 10 or more journalists and photographers swarming around the action, they did not stop off at Ritz or at the corner of Alameda Lorena, to commemorate the men who died. There wasn't any attempt to reach out to the residents of Jardins, nor to enlist the wider community. I don't fault them for it -- these were not on their agenda. Indeed, Jardins was not even on their agenda. But the lack of such a response from Jardins itself is what bothered me.
As I walked along, I was frustrated that the gay activists were quick to exploit these deaths for a noble cause (without even mentioning the deaths), but that the residents of this bairro have no organization, no voice, and no apparent public will to address the fact that blood is being spilled here by highly visible assailants who come into this neighborhood with the sole intention of causing trouble.
From what I have heard, there is the Associação dos Lojistas da Oscar Freire (the Oscar Friere Storeowners Association) -- and that's it. This organization has proven quite powerful, with their most recent accomplishment being the renovation of most of their street, making it one of the only "first world" looking avenues in the whole country. But no other civic associations that I can find here.
That is not to say the lojistas wouldn't want to step up. It's also not to say a residents' association in one of the wealthiest and highest-profile neighborhoods in the largest city in South America couldn't be organized. I do know that every residential building here has a condo association, so there is a skeleton in place for some kind of network to be threaded together. But why hasn't it happened? Some folks here say it doesn't exist because people don't care, while others say simply that people here don't know how to organize and just need someone to show them. I tend to think the truth is somewhere in between, probably closer to the latter. I can't imagine people don't care here. I don't want to believe that.
So, I was proud to have marched. And I felt a little less powerless. But I'm even more enervated as well. We need a march to go down our end of Augusta. We need a passeata to pass in front of Ritz and to head straight down to the headquarters of the 78th police district on Rua Estados Unidos. We need an opportunity for the residents of this area to vocalize their fears, their outrage at the murders, and their expectation that the authorities are going to prevent the next one because it's their job.
I was in Mexico City (São Paulo's Latin American rival city) in June 2004 when over 250,000 people marched against violent crime and demanded that the anemic government do its job to combat it. It frightened the authorities because it was a middle-class protest, and it showed the depth of disgust and frustration that they shared. They dressed in white, held aloft the pictures of crime victims, and had the support of hundreds of civic and religious organizations. I think it's no surprise that President Felipe Calderón made a point of visible, effective police actions in high-crime towns and cities in the north when he came to office this year. He heard them, but only because they spoke.
Maybe it's time to stop wondering where our parade is here in Jardins, and do something about it.
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