REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS MOUNT ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN CHILE

By Left Voice.

March 8, 2021



An Interview With Two Socialist Candidates For The Elections To The Constitutional Convention In Chile On April 11.



https://popularresistance.org/revolutionary-workers-mount-election-campaign-in-chile/






On April 11, Chile will elect a convention to write a new constitution, which will replace the constitution of 1980, written by the far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet. Left Voice spoke with two candidates running to join the Constitutional Convention, Joseffe Cáceres and Daniel Vargas, both from the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PTR).

Joseffe Cáceres is a leader of the union of cleaning workers at the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences near Santiago. She is a member of the national leadership of the PTR and a spokesperson of the women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She is a candidate in one of the districts on the periphery of Santiago made up of slums. She is 33 years old and a mother. She joined the PTR when she was a young hip-hop activist.

Daniel Vargas is a lawyer who, during Chile’s October 2019 rebellion, became well known for defending people who had been arrested. He was an organizer of the Human Rights Commission of the Emergency and Protection Committee of Antofagasta. This organization coordinated unions, poor residents, student groups, and human rights organizations during the rebellion — it was the principal organizing body of the rebellion in this mining town in northern Chile, one of the main port and industrial centers of the country. He is 34 years old.

One month remains before the Constitutional Convention is elected. How is the situation in Chile?

Daniel Vargas: I think there is a mix of feelings. On the one hand, lots of people hope that the Constitutional Convention will be able to make major changes to the country. The constitution of 1980 represents the legacy of the dictatorship and enshrines precarious living conditions, as well as the privatization of education, health care, pensions, etc. This is why the day the referendum for a new constitution passed turned into a mass celebration.

On the other hand, many people have a deep distrust in the constituent process, which was designed behind our backs by the same parties that for years administered the legacy of the dictatorship. The mobilizations of October 2019 began as a revolt against a price hike for public transportation. The government responded with repression, and this radicalized the movement, transforming it into a nationwide rebellion lasting several months. It reached its peak on November 12, when the main unions called for a general strike. This was the biggest strike since the end of the dictatorship.

The president, the right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera, was left on the ropes. In this situation, the main parties signed an “Agreement for Peace and a New Constitution.” This agreement defined the current process. The truth is that the regime aimed to contain the crisis and prevent the mobilizations in the streets from toppling Piñera. Senators and deputies who participated in the agreement have had to acknowledge that at the time the Piñera government was at risk of becoming unsustainable.

Many people see this as an agreement for impunity. We should not forget that since the agreement was signed, police brutality has killed a dozen people, and there are still hundreds of prisoners from the revolt. This generates outrage in broad sectors.

There is also a feeling of uncertainty because of the pandemic. Like most countries, Chile is going through a period of economic and social crisis, as millions of people have lost their jobs. There has been an increase in poverty and in precarious working conditions. It is very probable that the hope being placed in the process will conflict with the limitations of the convention, and with the economic and social situation generally.

How will voting take place?

Joseffe Cáceres: To give you an idea, the day they signed the “Peace Agreement,” there was no celebrating on the streets. The right-wing government, the social democratic opposition, and even the reformist Left sat down to work out an agreement to save the government — not something that generates much confidence. Quickly people began to discover the “fine print.”

I‘ll give you a few examples: the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention will be according to the same rules as elections to congress. This implies a whole series of advantages for the traditional parties. So of the total financing granted by the state to all the campaigns, 42 percent is going to the Right and 31 percent to the social democratic opposition. The independent campaigns — representing the majority of the candidates — will have less than 3.5 percent. Also, new parties and independents will get less than one second of advertising time on television. Less than one second!

So the Right campaigned to keep Pinochet’s constitution. They lost the vote, with almost 80 percent voting in favor of a new constitution. Only the wealthiest areas in the country voted against. Yet this same Right will now be guaranteed overrepresentation in the convention. There will be a “two-thirds quorum,” meaning that just a third of candidates will be able to block any measure. In other words, every single thing will need to be negotiated with the Right, who have already announced that they will defend the fundamental pillars of the dictatorship’s legacy.

The convention will guarantee impunity for Piñera, and the state apparatus will continue to function under the government’s control. The youth, the vanguard of the social explosion, will not have the right to vote or be elected. For these reasons, different intellectuals, activists of the rebellion, and sectors of the Left have declared that this is not a free and sovereign constituent assembly, as we had demanded.

That’s why we shouldn’t be deceived by the large number of candidates and proposals offered in the campaign. This is the same illusion the owners of Chile have always offered: I’ll allow you to participate, but I will make sure to control the process.

The convention has 17 seats reserved for Chile’s indigenous peoples, whose demands and struggles were an important aspect of the October rebellion. Is the convention a step forward for them?

Joseffe Cáceres: The flag of the Mapuche people was one of the main emblems of the rebellion. The Chilean state has historically criminalized the struggles of indigenous peoples. This represents the xenophobia of the ruling elite. But when millions of Chileans took to the streets spontaneously, they waved the Mapuche flag — a flag of a people who fought back against the Chilean state for centuries.

I cannot imagine that these 17 seats will be enough to placate this struggle, which has only intensified since the October rebellion. The south of Chile, which is the area with the greatest concentration of indigenous peoples, is currently in a state of extreme tension. After the rebellion, many Mapuche communities intensified their land occupations, confronting large landowners and logging companies that have stolen their lands. In this context, racist murders against Mapuche continue, alongside raids against communities and further militarization of the area. The government is currently debating whether to decree a state of siege, which would mean a new kind of repression.

There is a lot at stake, because the ancestral and territorial demands of the Mapuche people are in direct conflict with the property claims of the big logging companies in the south. Pinochet gave huge subsidies to these companies to exploit the forests at the expense of indigenous communities. Today logging is in the hands of Chile’s biggest corporations.

That is why it is virtually impossible for this convention to resolve the demands of indigenous peoples peacefully, including the return of stolen lands, and end to militarization, the release of political prisoners, and the right to self-determination. For us, the only way to win these demands is to coordinate joint struggles of indigenous communities together with the working class and the millions of people who support the Mapuche cause.

For 30 years, Chile has been administered by two political blocs: the Right, represented by the current president Sebastián Piñera; and the Center Left, whose most well-known figure internationally is the former president Michelle Bachelet. How are these two forces presenting themselves in these elections?

Daniel Vargas: The Right is running for the Constitutional Convention with a single slate, including the racist far-right party of José Antonio Kast. (Kast is trying to become a kind of Chilean Trump, but he is not very popular.) This is Piñera’s coalition, and he is one of the most hated presidents in the history of Chile. His hands are stained with blood. The Right is campaigning for the defense of private property, the free market, and fiscal austerity. In other words, they seek to maintain the legacy of the dictatorship.

The Center Left is made up of the former Concertación coalition. These parties are running as the slate Constituent Unity. Besides Bachlet’s Socialist Party, one of the main pillars of this coalition is the Christian Democracy party, which initially supported the military coup of 1973. It then led the so-called “transition to democracy,” following the plans of U.S. imperialism for the region. Today the party’s chairman says that his main international model is Angela Merkel, and they will campaign to support governability and responsibility.

One of the main slogans of the rebellion was “It’s not about 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years” [i.e., not about a fare hike of 30 pesos, but about 30 years of neoliberalism]. Of those 30 years, the center-left Concertación coalition was governing for more than 20 of them. These governments defended the fundamental economic pillars of the dictatorship, with Chile as a paradise for neoliberalism. But they were also responsible for innovations in this field. For example, they created the private student loan system that today keeps hundreds of thousands of young people in debt for life just for attending college.

What about Chile’s reformist Left, including the Communist Party and the Frente Amplio (Broad Front)?

Daniel Vargas: The Frente Amplio was a signatory to the “Peace Agreement” that allowed Piñera to remain in power, while millions of people were shouting on the streets: “Piñera must resign!” For a couple of years, the Frente Amplio represented the “new Left,” aligned with projects like Podemos in the Spanish State. This did not last long, however, because the party was delegitimized during the rebellion and suffered an important internal crisis. Of the 20 deputies they got elected at the last election, only 12 are aligned with the Frente Amplio today. A number of the parties and organizations have since broken with the front.

The Communist Party took part in the negotiations to sign this agreement, but it ultimately withdrew. Despite publicly criticizing the agreement, the Communist Party did not call for mobilizations. The CP plays a leading role in the main trade union federation, the CUT. Just days before the agreement was signed, the CUT had called a general strike. Yet even though masses of people wanted to continue the struggle and recognized that a trap was being laid, the union bureaucracy led by the CP decided to sit down with the government to negotiate. They never called a strike again.

The Communist Party has criticized the Frente Amplio harshly for the latter’s role in the rebellion. But now they are campaigning on a joint slate. Their programs are not very different. They want the new constitution to incorporate social rights such as health care, education, pensions, etc. They want this to be financed by the redistribution of wealth. But they want such measures to be taken in isolation, relying on the letter of the constitution and the institutions of the regime. And in that way, it will be impossible to resolve structural issues such as precarious working conditions, poverty, and the country’s dependence on multinational corporations and monopolies. The big capitalists will resist fundamental measures, and only the struggle of the working class and the poor masses can confront them. This is one of the lessons learned from the experience of “progressive” governments in Latin America [the so-called “Pink Tide”].

The Trotskyists of the PTR are also running in the elections. What are your main proposals?

Joseffe Cáceres: We have slates in eight districts, and more than 70 candidates in different cities across the country. Our candidates are workers, young people, and women who actively participated in the rebellion. The list includes Dauno Totoro, who was persecuted by the government for saying what thousands of people were saying: we have to get rid of the government through a general strike in order to establish a free and sovereign constituent assembly. Also Suely Arancibia, who was part of the First Line, the group of militant youth who took the lead in defending the mobilizations from police repression. Our candidates were organizers of the Emergency and Protection Committee in Antofagasta, including the teachers Galia Aguilera and Patricia Aguilera, the workers’ leader Lester Calderón, and Daniel here. That committee coordinated unions, neighborhood organizations, human rights groups, healthcare activists, and Front Line fighters. Our candidates include healthcare workers’ leaders from different cities.

We want to put an end to the neoliberal plunder of the last 30 years. These have been decades of looting, not only of natural resources but also of our rights, our working conditions, and even our lives. We are running in these elections to raise the banners of the October rebellion high: the struggle to get rid of this government with a general strike and a free and sovereign constituent assembly. In other words, we want to put an end to the legacy of the dictatorship via mass mobilizations. This is the only way to take fundamental measures, such as the nationalization of natural resources like copper and the strategic sectors of the economy that are in the hands of imperialist and national monopolies. This is the only way to really solve the urgent problems of the people, such as quality education and public health care, and end to the private pension system, and a minimum wage in line with the cost of feeding a family.

There is money for all this. The price of copper is at a historic high. Big capitalists have increased their wealth severalfold during the pandemic. Meanwhile, unemployment, poverty, and precarity increase.

There are many people who are mobilizing for demands like this. Because many people were opposed to the “Peace Agreement” and have fought the bureaucrats’ truce with the government. And many see how the big capitalists continue to make profits at the expense of our lives and health.

How has the election campaign been going?

Joseffe Cáceres: Our campaign is intense. Workers, students, precariously employed young people, activists, and professionals are organizing around the ideas of our campaign. So far, about 500 volunteers have joined the campaign. Most of them are workers in health care, education, and industry. This is in addition to the hundreds of the PTR’s militants across the country, who are organizing the campaign day by day.

Besides handing out hundreds of thousands of leaflets on the streets, we are also organizing open meetings. We did a meeting of healthcare workers where more than 100 people from different hospitals got together. There they voted to support our candidates and to use the elections to campaign to defend the public healthcare system against privatization and to improve working conditions in hospitals.

The media have profiled our candidates, such as an extensive interview CNN Chile did with Ignacio Cortés. He is not only the youngest candidate anywhere in the country for the Constitutional Convention, but he was president of the students’ union in a technical school and now has a precarious job at the Antofagasta Hospital. The press have also profiled our candidates who are LGBTQ+ and teachers.

Some socialists argue that the demand for a constituent assembly was always a trap to divert the movement and that revolutionaries should have argued against it.1 How do you as revolutionary socialists relate to an institution of bourgeois democracy like the Constitutional Convention, which the ruling class hopes will reestablish the legitimacy of its regime?

Daniel Vargas: We were among the thousands of activists across the country who opposed the “Peace Agreement” and systematically denounced the pitfalls of the Constitutional Convention. We do this with the conviction that only the mobilization of the working class and the poor masses can put an end to the legacy of the dictatorship. We saw the enormous power of the class struggle, which proved to the whole world that neoliberalism in Chile never benefited us — it only helped a handful of billionaires.

But at the same time, there are millions of people who are putting their hope in this process. We must accompany this experience so that a revolutionary program can become a material force, not just words. To accomplish this, we use all the tools that can amplify our voice, including elections.

We managed to register as a political party in Chile’s principal cities. We are the only group on the revolutionary socialist Left that has managed to win a party status like this. We put this tool at the disposal of everyone who wants to fight for a revolutionary, working-class program and denounce all the traps that are designed to stop our mobilizations.

Note:
Examples of socialists who oppose the demand for a constituent assembly include the Spartacist League and the International Marxist Tendency of Alan Woods.




Interview and translation: Nathaniel Flakin

HOW ‘BIG AG’ ATE UP AMERICA’S SMALL FARMS

By Bedabrata Pain, Times of India.

March 8, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/how-big-ag-ate-up-americas-small-farms/




40 years ago, the US threw open farming to the corporate sector, something India now wants to do. How has this played out there? Los Angeles-based IITian Bedabrata Pain, an ex-Nasa scientist and national award-winning filmmaker, set out on a 10,000-km road trip across rural America to document the story of their farmers. This is what he saw.

The roads were icy and the wind biting cold as we started our 10,000-km journey through the heart of America one January morning. Sristy Agrawal, Rajashik Tarafder — young physicists pursuing their PhDs — Rumela Gangopadhyay, a theatre artiste, and I wanted to witness the state of farming in rural America, the quintessential “Trump country”.

Shooting in the frigid weather amid a pandemic was gruelling, but the warm welcome we got from farmers — Republican or Democrat, black or white — made up for it. We were surprised to learn that the American farm landscape, like India’s, is dominated by small farmers. They make up 90% of all farms, but produce only 25% of the market value. This was our first clue to America’s rural crisis. In the last decade, income of small farms has consistently been in the red. In February 2020, the median US income from farming was a negative $1,400. Brent Brewer, a farmer, told us that while production cost of wheat has risen three-fold in the last 20 years, the farmgate price is just about what it was during the 1865 Civil War. He was right.

The US farmer’s share of the retail price has declined from 50% in the 1950s to less than 15% today. Debt has touched $425 billion, just shy of the all-time high reached in the recession of 1981. Loan default rates and bankruptcy filings are up, so are calls to the suicide prevention lines. Farmer suicide rates today are 4-5 times the national average. We heard about a farmer calling a suicide helpline, seated alone in his empty kitchen with the lights out and a loaded gun in his hand. We heard about a local bank officer who killed himself when forced by his management to recall loans and bankrupt farmers — folks he had personally known for years.

Nearly 80% of rural counties have witnessed population declines. George Naylor, a grain farmer in Iowa, showed us boarded-up homes in his neighbourhood. As farming dwindled, local businesses like seed suppliers, grain elevators (granaries), repair shops and even hospitals started disappearing. Today, some 1,000 schools close every year in America’s rural districts. Nearly all the farmers we talked to held the Reagan-era “opening up” of agriculture and the rise of “Big Ag” — gigantic agro-businesses that now dominate American farming — responsible for their plight.



Ronald Reagan became president of America in 1981. He was a crusader for the free market and deregulation, or “dereg”. Opening up the agrarian economy to create a competitive market by ending governments controls were seen as a panacea for farmers and consumers.

While the administration dismantled Great Depression-era mechanisms for family farms like price support, grain-reserve loans, and parity pricing (much like MSP in India), a global recession set in. Farmers woke up one morning to find farm-gate prices had collapsed, land values were decimated and interest rates had risen sharply. Shorn of government support, a quarter-million small farms closed, over a million generational farmers were displaced, and deserted towns began dotting the rural landscape.

What happened to the land? Unsurprisingly, Big Ag gobbled it up as landless farmers started toiling under onerous contract farming terms. Giant corporations used financial clout to control the market, depress farm-gate prices, buy infrastructure for a song, and raise costs to a point where small farms became unsustainable.

Jim Goodman knew each one of his 45 cows by name. After struggling for 40 years, he finally sold his cows and closed down his dairy farm. Joel Greeno, another dairy farmer, now works 12-hour shifts in a factory, hoping to save whatever is left of his farm. The Naylors are trying hard to save their small grain farm. When a sharecropper missed out on one loan payment, a large machinery company remotely shut off his tractor in the middle of sowing season.



Things are worse for livestock farms. Mike Callicrate, a rancher, told us how the corporations colluded to force him to shut shop. A handful of meat-processing companies now own the livestock, while poultry, beef, and pig farmers are more or less serfs — raising the animals for them under contract. They have no bargaining power because these food giants are the only players left in town.



Nearly 75% of all US poultry farmers today live below the poverty line while Big Ag controls everything from “farm to fork” and from seeds to grocery stores. Four large firms control at least two-thirds of the seed market, 80% of chemical fertiliser, grain trading, dairy production, meat supply, and almost 100% of farm machinery. Meanwhile, government money flows to the corporations in the form of write-offs, market facilitation and crop insurance subsidies. Over 70% of the $50 billion in US government subsidies goes to the top 20% of farms.

John E Ikerd, retired professor emeritus at University of Missouri, says this couldn’t have happened without political patronage. Batting for greater efficiency and consumer welfare, Reagan enabled the rise of powerful monopolies. In Reagan’s own words: “We’re going to allow people to concentrate power because it’s going to be more efficient… these guys are going to use it (monopoly power) to drive down the price.”



Did monopoly power reduce food prices? In the past 40 years, average food prices in America have shot up by more than 200%, while the earnings of the bottom 90% have increased by less than 25%. Joe Maxwell, who leads a campaign group called Family Farm Action, told us about entrenched rural poverty, child hunger, and food-insecure homes. Not what you’d expect to hear about the most powerful nation.

Today, rural America feels abandoned, its dignity stripped away. As we drove home, one thing had become clear to us: far from being a panacea, the opening up of US agriculture, the elimination of MSP-like parity schemes, and the rise of contract farming has been a lose-lose proposition for everybody other than Big Ag.

New interview with Lula

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, has led an extraordinary life of lows and highs. Raised in poverty, he became a factory worker, then a union organizer, then the founder of a leftist political party, then president of the republic striding across the world stage, then a prison inmate accused of corruption, then a free man once again, insisting on his innocence, fighting to clear his name.

Yesterday, Brazil was convulsed by news that several criminal cases against Lula, as he is popularly known, were voided by a Supreme Court justice, “restoring his right to seek the presidency again, in a decision with the potential to reshape Brazil’s political future,” as The New York Times reported. Lula is now expected to run next year for the presidency, against the rightist Trump govern-alike Jair Bolsonaro.

In a conversation recorded before the justice’s decision, but with the possibility it created already in mind, I talked with Lula about what he learned in prison, how he reads the rise of fascism around the world, what he thinks progressives must do to win national elections as he did, and whether he is ready for another go at the presidency.

“I say every day that I am 75 but I feel that I have the energy of 30-year-old,” he told me. “And I am as horny as a 21-year-old, so I can say to you that I'm alive, fighting for democracy.” There is no one quite like Lula. While I cannot say he answered my actual question in more than one case, he did have the charming habit of punctuating every answer with utterances of “my dear Anand.”

But first: I will be doing my regular live chat/webinar thing today at 1 p.m. New York time, 10 a.m. Pacific time, and 6 p.m. London time. If you’re new to The Ink, they’re fun and engaging.






ANAND: I wanted to begin by going back and asking you about your journey. You grew up in poverty, you ascended to the height of power in your country, and then found yourself in prison. When you were there, in that solitude, I wonder where your mind was. What were you thinking about? How did you look back on your journey in that solitude?

LULA: When I was at the federal police cell, I was thinking a lot, and I was thinking about a phrase, a sentence, that Victor Hugo, the French writer, said long ago. He said, “The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.” And this sentence today is even stronger than it was then, because we never have had so many people living disenfranchised on planet earth. And there's no explanation to justify the difference between the poor and the rich in the world. There's no explanation to convince people why someone can have ten meals a day and other people have to go ten days without a meal.

So the only blame that I could assign is to the ruling class in the world, those who are in charge of the politics in the developed countries, those who run the world. They have no concern for poor people. They have no concern for the number of people who die every day. For them, the poor are just a number.

But those people, those numbers, have grandsons, mothers, sons, daughters. They want to live with dignity. So I was thinking about that when I was in prison.

How is it possible for someone to be proud to say that they have a hundred hotels, or $1 billion in a bank account? How can someone build a foundation that gives out a little bit of charity, a little bit of money here and there, but then, when it comes to actually solving the problem, they refuse to take responsibility that no one should be so rich. So we have to think about a world that is more fair and more human.

ANAND: In the past, you've cited the Mozambican writer Mia Couto on why Brazil turned to its current president, Jair Bolsonaro. "In times of terror,” Mia Couto wrote, “we choose monsters to protect us." So Brazil is right up there with the United States on Covid-19 cases. Even before the virus, the economy was plummeting, unemployment was in crisis, the president was facing impeachment measures. Can you describe for an international audience the current state of the crisis in Brazil as you see it?

LULA: Anand, the issue is that whoever governs the country has to work as the conductor of an orchestra. He needs to establish harmony in society. In the case of Brazil, we have a president of the republic who represents militiamen. He is very much linked to these paramilitaries and also to the armed forces. He thinks that the problem of humanity will be solved by guns, by arms.

So this man who rules our country, he should have taken care of Covid-19 when it first emerged in China and in Europe. What do you do when you govern a country? First of all, you set up a team of scientists to discuss the severity of the situation. And then afterward you set up a group of scientists who will guide the political and policy decisions of the government on public health matters. He did none of that. Because he didn't believe in Covid. He said that Covid didn't exist.

This is a government that doesn't govern. He is just a copycat of Trump's administration. Trump is his reference, and he salutes Trump and he thinks that everything that Trump did is good. He followed Trump's instructions.





ANAND: It's easy for each of us to look at the turn to demagogues and fascists in our own country and make local explanations for why this is happening. You may have your explanation in Brazil. We in the United States are talking a lot about the history of white supremacy in this country and how that led to Trump. But in a strange way, the same thing is happening in so many different places that have very different histories. What is your explanation for this pattern in the world, the Bolsonaros, the Orbáns, the Trumps, the Dutertes? What are the larger forces you see enabling those kinds of people to win?

LULA: My dear Anand, I would like to start by talking a little bit about my experience in Brazil.

Brazil had 350 years of slavery, of Black slavery. And the Brazilian ruling class elite still believes in a kind of slavery regime. I read a lot of books about slavery in Brazil when I was in prison. Today I better understand racism in Brazil, the prejudice that exists in Brazil toward Blacks and other people. And I am convinced that the major problem of the Brazilian elite is that they do not accept that these people should rise on the social ladder.

When I first took office, I made a very simple speech. I didn't make big promises when I was sworn in. I learned in the labor movement that you can't promise what you know in advance that you will not deliver. And so I started my speech saying the following: that when I end my term, if every Brazilian woman and man would have had their breakfast, their lunch, and their dinner, I will have fulfilled my life mission.

I said that because I knew what hunger was. I experienced hunger when I was a child. I ate my first piece of bread when I was seven years old. Before that age, I ate a breakfast of flour and black coffee. So I knew that I had to end hunger.

Hunger is not a phenomenon of nature. It is a phenomenon of the lack of responsibility of rich people, of the white elites. It is a phenomenon of those who rule and do not care. They don't look at the poor, they don't meet the poor's needs, and all the money that should go to the poor is spent. All the money that goes to the rich is called development. All the money goes to the poor is called government spending.

ANAND: As someone who is a former head of state on the world stage, and a citizen of the world, I want to ask you, selfishly, what it has been like for you to observe the United States and its unraveling at this time. How do you see us from where you sit?

LULA: In 2002, I was invited by then-President George W. Bush to go to the White House. I was already president-elect, but I was not yet sworn in. When I arrived at the White House, I found President Bush was obsessed with hunting down terrorists, and he wanted to invade Iraq. He talked with me for a long time about the need to invade Iraq and the need to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He invited me, as the incoming president of Brazil, to participate in that campaign against Saddam Hussein.

I replied to President Bush, "Mr. President, I am not acquainted with Saddam Hussein. Iraq is thousands of kilometers away from Brazil. This man has never done any evil against my country. I have nothing against Iraq and Saddam. My problem is with hunger in Brazil, which has tens of millions of people living below the poverty line. That's the war that I have to wage, President Bush, the war against hunger, the war against inequality. And this war, President Bush, I know I'm going to win. But against Iraq, I don't know if I'm going to win a war. So I'm sorry. The war that I'm going to wage is against poverty and hunger in my country."

Still, I had a very good relationship with President Bush and with President Obama. But I discovered that the Americans do not accept the idea that in the Americas there could be another country that could be a player, or become a global player. The only player that they accept is the U.S.





ANAND: I want to ask you, as someone who led your country and then went to prison on charges that you deny, there's this discussion right now in the United States about justice for Donald Trump. As you know, Trump has long faced accusations of corruption. There are a lot of people who do not like Trump, who would love to see him go to prison. There are multiple investigations underway. Would you suggest that that's a good thing, that he be investigated and go to prison, if those charges are real and proven? Or do you think it's a dangerous road for a democracy to get into pursuing former leaders criminally, even if they're guilty?

LULA:I believe that it strengthens democracy if all people are equal before the law. Being president of the republic, or a former president or minister, does not give immunity. Everybody has to be investigated as democracy demands under the rule of law. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty. And you cannot be convicted by the media first.

Here in Brazil, when a citizen is arrested, he has often already been convicted by public opinion because of what the mainstream media reports on the person.

I was the victim of a great judicial scandal. The judicial system wanted to end the Workers' Party government because they didn’t want Black people to have a voice in government, they didn’t want the poor to be lifted from poverty, they didn’t want domestic maids to have a daughter or son in university, studying. They don't accept that, the ruling class.

So they invented a story against me, and then they tried to justify the story. All of them, they lied. And that's why I'm very calm. I sleep well because I'm waiting for justice.

ANAND: I want to ask you about the political left and the possibilities for winning. One of the debates in the United States, I assume in Brazil as well, is about whether to run candidates like you who have lived experience of poverty, who come from very humble backgrounds, who are working in ordinary jobs, versus a lot of the professional class that dominates the Democratic Party in the United States, I imagine the upper ranks of the Workers’ Party as well. Do you think there needs to be more candidates from backgrounds like yours if parties on the left are to succeed?

LULA: I wish the world could have many more political parties and candidates running who represented working people and poor people, and represented women and poor women, and represented Black people. We need to acquire the awareness that people, even though very poor, can have the wisdom to participate in politics and are going to advocate for the people they represent.

Do you know what a human being wants? They want a job. They want to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They want their kids to go to schools. They want to have the right once a month to go to a restaurant, to eat out or have a beer with friends. They want to have the right to safety. They want to be treated with dignity and respect. You can't kill and suffocate your citizens, as we saw with the policeman who put his knee on George Floyd’s throat.

We cannot lose our humanity. It is necessary for us not to lose our solidarity. It is necessary for us to think a little bit with our hearts.





ANAND: I'm going to give you a new job as a political adviser. You successfully won two national elections on a left-populist platform. No one in America, Bernie Sanders or anyone else, has successfully won the presidency on such a platform in modern times. What advice would you give progressives in the United States to win? Because, like Brazil, this is a conservative country. It has got a powerful ruling class. It has a lot of ordinary people who love capitalism even though it doesn't work for them very well. How do you actually win? What could progressives do in terms of message, in terms of outreach, in terms of how they persuade voters?

LULA: I always say that all my life I called myself a socialist. And when I joined the presidency, it was the first time that this country had the opportunity to have a capitalist system that would be more humanized.

What you need to do is not have an ultra-left-wing speech that people won't believe. People have to believe what you're saying. So you cannot promise what in the mindset of the listener cannot be achieved. You can only promise what is possible, and that they can understand can be done.

The problem is that the politician, when he's running for office, he likes to go outside in open cars and wave to people. He enjoys doing that. But when he's elected, the state apparatus locks him in a shielded car. Then he can't wave anymore to the people. He doesn't greet people in the streets anymore. And when someone from among the people protests, he thinks that that person is his enemy.

The problem is that politicians forget the campaign. One day after the election, the politicians forget everything that they promised. So during the electoral period, no politician wants to meet with bankers. No politician wants to meet with big businessmen. They only want to meet the people during the campaign. But once elected, they don't want to meet the people anymore. They want to meet the bankers. They want to meet with big business.

ANAND: Do you view the coronavirus crisis, and the economic, political, and racial crises in many places which it has coincided with — do you view this as an inflection point for change? Do you think we may be at the end of an era and the beginning of a new one?

LULA: My dear friend Anand, this will not happen by chance. We must understand that it is necessary for us to change our behavior after the Covid phenomenon. We have to think of building another world that would accumulate less and distribute more.

We should make a commitment that no one on planet Earth should go to sleep one single night without having 2,500 calories that day. We should make a commitment as humanists that no child in the world could wake up in the morning without a glass of milk. We have to think of creating jobs, too, of technologies’ impact on jobs and on the economy, because now we can see that the fruits of technology are in the hands of very few people. We have to find a way that this wealth can be distributed.

I believe in the possibility of building a world with more fairness. It's necessary that we should start, each one of us, doing what the American people did against that police officer who killed George Floyd. It's necessary that we should not lose sight of the capacity for dignity. Dignity is the most important thing.





ANAND: Are you going to try to become president again?

LULA: Well, I only have one barrier, which is nature. Nature is relentless.

I am now 75. Physically, from a health standpoint, I'm very well. I say every day that I am 75 but I feel that I have the energy of 30-year-old. And I am as horny as a 21-year-old, so I can say to you that I'm alive, fighting for democracy, and I don't have to run for the presidency to be in politics.

So I'll continue to struggle. I'm enthusiastic, conveying energy to people, conveying vitality to people. There's no room, there's no time, to stay quiet. We have to build democracy. We have to build a better world, and to fight every day, because if we take a nap, someone would very much like to overthrow democracy.




Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the former president of Brazil. This interview, conducted via a live interpreter, was edited and condensed for clarity.

The white to vote

Judd Legum
Mar 9



Georgia has allowed no-excuse absentee voting for all elections since 2005. It was part of a voting bill passed that year by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by the Republican Governor, Sonny Perdue.

The 2005 bill was best known for requiring a photo ID to vote in Georgia. But Republicans decided that no ID should be required to vote absentee. At the time, Georgia Republicans argued that absentee voting was more secure than in-person voting:


"For those willing to commit fraud, there is a paper trail with absentee ballots which does not exist with electronic voting," argued [Republican election official J. Randolph] Evans. "In addition to the request for the absentee ballot, as well as the other records maintained, the ballot itself serves as a paper record. If challenged, and found to be fraudulent, the ballot can itself be removed before being cast."

Because of that, "the absentee ballot is safer and more secure than a paperless electronic voting system where there is no effective remedy once a vote has been cast."

Here is how The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered the signing of the law by Perdue on April 23, 2005:


Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law a bill which wipes out several currently accepted forms of voter identification so that only photo IDs can be used...

Critics in the Legislature said Georgia's law would be one of the most restrictive in the nation.

The new Georgia law also allows people to vote absentee without an excuse, and for a longer period. Those votes by mail would not require a picture ID.

Political observers say Republicans tend to benefit the most from absentee balloting.

For 15 years, those political observers were right. Republicans and white voters took advantage of no-excuse absentee voting more than Democrats and voters of color.

Then, in the 2020 presidential election, things changed. For the first time, Black voters took advantage of absentee voting more frequently than white voters. The shift coincided with an upset victory in the state by Joe Biden.


Although vote-by-mail usage exploded for all racial groups, it increased less for white voters than for others. Although white voters still made up a majority of mail voters, their share of the vote-by-mail electorate dropped from 67 percent in 2016 to 54 percent in 2020; the Black share, meanwhile, surged from 23 percent to 31 percent...nearly 30 percent of Black voters cast their ballot by mail in 2020, but just 24 percent of white voters did so.

On Monday, the Georgia Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, voted 29-20 to end no-excuse absentee voting on a party-line vote.




Under the bill, most Georgians would be allowed to vote absentee only if they are in the military, away from their precinct, observing a religious holiday, caring for someone with a disability, or required to work "for the protection of the health, life, or safety of the public during the entire time the polls are open." The bill also adds an ID requirement for absentee ballots.

Republicans now argue that absentee voting must be restricted because it is inherently less secure. "As we get further away from voting in person, we get further away from the highest level of security in elections,” said Jake Evans, chair of the Georgia chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association.

The bill passed by the Georgia Senate, however, carves out an exception for voters that are 65 or older. They will be able to continue voting by absentee without an excuse. Why? As a new report from the Brennan Center reveals, in 2020, "fewer than half of vote-by-mail participants under 65 years old were white." But a more than 60 percent of absentee voters over 65 were white. Therefore, "legislation restricting mail voting for younger voters disproportionately benefits white voters."




Thirteen of the Georgia Senators who voted for the bill on Monday also signed onto a brief urging the United States Supreme Court to invalidate millions of votes in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It was part of a last-ditch effort to install Trump for a second term based on his false claims of voter fraud.

"The purpose of 241 and all of the vote-limiting bills we have before us is to validate a lie. It is to prevent massive voter turnout from happening again, especially in minority communities," State Senator Nikki Merritt (D) said on Monday.

Many of the other voting restrictions being proposed in the Georgia legislature target black voters. A bill that recently passed the Georgia House, for example, would limit early voting on Sundays. "Black voters (who make up 30 percent of the registered electorate) accounted for 36.5 percent of Sunday voters, but just 26.8 percent of early in-person voters on other days," the Brennan Center notes.
Signs of life from the business community?

Last week, Popular Information reported on the corporate donors — including Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, and UPS — behind the Georgia legislators pushing major voter suppression bills in the House and Senate. Although these corporations claim to support voting rights, none have publicly opposed the bills or pledged to divest from their sponsors. They have ignored a campaign from a coalition of civil rights groups urging them to take action.

There are new indications, however, that change might be on the way.

In a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Coca-Cola said it supported efforts by the "Georgia Chamber of Commerce to help facilitate a balanced approach to the elections bills that have been introduced in the Georgia Legislature this session." UPS made a similar statement.

The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is part of a group organized by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) called the Bipartisan Task Force for Safe, Secure, and Accessible Elections. It is a diverse group, which also includes the ACLU and the Georgia NAACP.

On Monday, the task force released a statement criticizing the Georgia legislature's "legislative process" on bills to restrict voting:


As we monitor the progress of elections-related legislation in the Georgia General Assembly, we are concerned that the legislative process is proceeding at a pace that does not allow full examination of all the factors that must be considered. There is a need for responsible elections policymaking to be deliberate and evidence-based, not rushed. When we see proposals that properly balance voter access with integrity, we will voice support.

The last line is key. The task force is saying that it will endorse legislation that it supports. Since it has not endorsed any bill, this implies that, at present, task force opposes all voting legislation in the legislature.

This is a long way from Coca-Cola or other major corporations speaking out against voter suppression legislation, but it is a sign of progress.

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