[I hope those who cheer Lula’s victory pay attention to the
source of his success. The route to a greener and fairer future is not
through focus groups, it is through mobilisation of a multi-racial
working-class, galvanised by the prospect of a government bold enough
to act.]
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LULA’S VICTORY IS A TESTAMENT TO SOLIDARITY  
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Jeremy Corbyn
November 2, 2022
Progressive International
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_ I hope those who cheer Lula’s victory pay attention to the source
of his success. The route to a greener and fairer future is not
through focus groups, it is through mobilisation of a multi-racial
working-class, galvanised by the prospect of a government bold enough
to act. _

Supporters of president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva celebrate
while listening to his speech at the Paulista avenue after his victory
on the presidential runoff election, (Photo: Carl de Souza/AFP via
Getty Images)

 

Lula's historic victory, unthinkable just two years ago, couldn’t
have happened without millions of people fighting for it. As Bolsonaro
supporters refuse to accept the results, the mobilisation of those
masses will be key to securing democracy.

Ediane Maria Nascimento speaks with confidence, not born from grandeur
but from gratitude. Wearing a broad smile, and with her arms behind
her back, she thanks everybody who has gathered in São Paulo to
campaign for Lula in the Presidential election. Ediane would have been
forgiven for any smugness, since she did what Lula failed to do three
weeks earlier: win an election the first time round.

2 October did not just mark the first round of the presidential
election. It marked the general election, in which members of the
National Congress and legislative assemblies were running for office
right around the country. And it marked the first ever election of a
domestic worker to São Paulo’s state legislature. A Black woman
from the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, Ediane had worked as a
housemaid her entire life while raising four children on her own.
‘My mother was domestic, I was domestic. My daughter broke the
cycle, and now I broke it too.’

Ediane was one of several women from minority ethnic backgrounds to
make history that day. Others included Sônia Guajajara—an
Indigenous woman who, like Ediane, successfully ran as a candidate for
the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL)— and Danieli Balbi—a Black
transgender woman representing the Communist Party of Brazil. Both
PSOL and the Communist Party were two of ten political parties that
had coalesced around Lula, including his own Worker’s Party (PT),
the Green Party, and the Brazilian Democratic Movement.

Lula’s campaign was much more than a coalition of political parties.
Standing in the Brazilian sunshine, Ediane was not wearing PSOL
merchandise. Instead, her red T-shirt was adorned with a four-letter
logo: MTST. Ediane is Leader of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem
Teto [[link removed]], translating to the Homeless Workers’
Movement. The group, founded in 1984, uses a variety of methods—from
staging squatters’ occupations to lobbying legislators—to confront
Brazil’s neoliberal housing model and increase the provision of
social housing. MTST is one of countless social movements that, like
the coalition of political parties, rallied behind Lula. Another is
the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
[[link removed]](MST),
or the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, which fights for access to
land for poor workers. Another is the Articulation of the Indigenous
Peoples of Brazil [[link removed]] (APIB),
which seeks to promote the rights, protect the lands, and strengthen
the union of Indigenous peoples. Their leader is none other than
Sônia Guajajara.

On Sunday, Lula was elected President of Brazil. Much has been made of
his stunning political comeback. Indeed, the idea of Lula winning the
2022 election was unthinkable as recently as two years ago, when he
was still serving an unjust conviction
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prison for corruption. Lula’s courageous refusal to let the
Brazilian state ‘bury [him] alive’ is remarkable. However, without
the support of social movements like the MTST, MST, and APIB, his
courage would have counted for nothing. As Lula himself recognised in
his victory speech, this was not a triumph for _him_. It was a
triumph for a ‘democratic movement that formed above political
parties, personal interests and ideologies.’ Lula won with the
support of a Left-led coalition of political parties, trade unions,
and social movements—parties, unions, and movements that brought
millions of workers, Indigenous people, and marginalised communities
together.

This triumph did not happen overnight. Before Monday’s victory was
the successful legal battle to restore Lula’s civil rights, waged by
those who cared about due process. It is thanks to people like
Geoffrey Robertson KC and John Watts that Lula was allowed to stand in
2022, successfully annulling his conviction the year before. Before
this legal battle was the founding of the PT in 1980. Before that was
decades of organised labour; the Brazilian Workers Confederation was
created in 1906 in the wake of a 26-day garment factory strike in Rio
de Janeiro. Lula may have been declared victorious on 2 October 2022,
but he was soaking up the spoils of a campaign that had been winning
and losing for decades.

In 2022, this campaign united around a transformative platform to
defeat fascism, secure social justice, and save the future of our
planet. Lula’s platform offered an alternative to impoverishment,
hatred, and ecocide: wealth taxes, debt-forgiveness, equal pay for men
and women, more affordable housing, an increase in the minimum wage, a
mass poverty-relief programme, the protection of Indigenous land,
language and rights, and an end to deforestation. These were
commitments he re-iterated in his victory speech. Perhaps the most
significant part in his delivery came at the end: Brazil, he said,
would not be dragged into a new Cold War or an endless arms race. Lula
would be a voice for diplomacy rather than war; under his leadership,
Brazil would endeavour to foster good relations with all global
partners, for the sake of international peace.

A Left-led coalition does not just deserve credit for
the _creation_ of Lula’s transformative platform. It will take
charge of its _preservation_ in power. After all, formal victory at
the ballot box is just the beginning. As I write this, Bolsonaro has
not conceded, and his supporters are blocking hundreds of roads to
protest the result. Monday’s result was a victory for a popular
grassroots movement, but it was a _narrow_ victory nonetheless, and
a narrow victory over a well-financed and deeply intolerant far right.
Lula will not resist the oncoming tidal wave alone. He will require
the continued support of those on the ground who have forged common
bonds beyond the electoral architecture.

I hope, then, that those who are quick to jump on the bandwagon of
Lula’s victory will pay attention to the source of his success.
Monday’s result proves that the route to a greener and fairer future
is not through triangulation, the marginalisation of the Left, or
attempts to charm CEOs. It is through the mobilisation of a
multi-racial working-class coalition, galvanised by the prospect of a
government bold enough to do what is necessary to tackle the most
important crises of our times.

As more and more people are plunged into debt, insecurity and
alienation, there is an ever-growing coalition of activists, trade
unions and social movements calling for a mass redistribution of
wealth, power, and ownership. Some of these networks have been decades
in the making. It would be a shame, to say the least, to waste their
collective energy by siding with the status quo. As Lula’s success
demonstrates: who needs focus groups when you have solidarity?

The global struggle for transformative change is waged by those whose
names we may never know. We owe it to every single one of them—we
owe it to each other—to win.

_Jeremy Corbyn is a member of Parliament in the UK and a former leader
of the Labour Party. He is also founder of the Peace and Justice
Project._

* Brazil
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* Lula
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* Left Unity
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* Left Strategies
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