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From now on, the offensive for the free fare

March 04, 2011

By: camarada d.

Translated by: Yuri Gama

In the morning of this Friday, one day before carnival holiday, about 2.000 people (according with the police, what give us the freedom to think in more people than that) protested around the regional city hall of MBoi Mirim, São Paulo [Brazil]. The spontaneous demonstration has its origin on the general dissatisfaction with the public transport – high fares, less buses, cut of bus lines and overcrowding buses.

The protest made me remember a part of the book “Transporte urbano nos países em desenvolvimento” [Free translation: “Urban transport in developing countries”] written by Eduardo Vasconcellos. There’s a part in which the transport researcher discusses how the public transport was left behind in the lobbying of public politics at the time of redefinitions that Brazil experienced and culminated in the 1988 Citizen’s Constitution. One of the reasons, suggests the author, it is because the lack of organized struggle and long-term vision by the social movements with respect the public transport.

It says him: [Free translation]: The new democratization of the political system initiated in 1982 wasn’t enough to bring important improvements in transport conditions, due to the decrease in public investments, high inflation, and the possible growth of unemployment. The social movements, around this issue, were limited in react to the dramatic lack of transport in remote areas or the occurrence of fatal pedestrian accidents of children in residential streets. In both cases, all the solutions adopted were so urgent as the social movements in itself, so, there weren’t real transformations on the transport or displacement.

I was thrilled with the news of this spontaneous protest, as well as with all of the other protest all around Brazil, against fare increases, not only for the joy that is to see people organizing themselves, but also due to the clarity that now we have about how transportation is, being a discuss subject in the agenda of the society. But we can’t let one more decade escape from us and only focus in short-term resistances, needed of course, against high fares. One hour the breath of these resistance movements will end. So now it’s the most important time: an offensive towards a complete change of the model of the system. After all, we don’t want to spend all of our lives discussing how much will raise and how many bus lines they will cut, do we? In Florianópolis, the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) - (Free Fare Movement), with the help of others organizations, will start the struggle against the bus fare raise, launching a discussão in the city about the free fare. In Joinville, the MPL is also starting to build a law project for a free fare system, and it seems that in São Paulo, the MPL will walk in the same direction as both cities. Maybe this is the most important moment in the history of MPL since its foundation. Unlike the important struggles from the 80’s, that were “more urgent than the movements in itself”, we are seeing now a consistent process of struggle that won’t die before the final victory, the right to the public transport assured for everyone.

Original version here: http://tarifazero.org/2011/03/04/daqui-pra-frente-a-ofensiva-pela-tarifa-zero/

A problem of all the brazilians, main subject for the brazilian left wing

January 28, 2011By Michelle AmaralTranslated from Portuguese to English by Yuri GamaThe activist of MPL (Free Fare Movement) affirms that the growing situation of the demonstrations shows that it’s a problem of all the braziliansIn a interview conceded by e-mail to the newspaper Brasil de Fato, Daniel Guimarães Tertschitsch, activist of MPL and member of Tarifa Zero (tarifazero.org), makes a positive balance of the demonstrations against the raise of the bus fares that happens since january. About 17 cities have had your bus fares raised and more 6 are about to raise it.Student movements and social organizations as MPL, are calling protests in many cities of the country. To Tertschitsch this shows that “this problem it’s a class problem, of the workers, of the marginalized, of all the country. “The exclusion pushes people, makes their lives more difficult, and sooner or later, we are seeing and participating in riots”, ponders the activist. He said, the difference that we see it today is that more and more we can notice a lucidity about how the transport system works.Check the interview below:What is the balance that we could make about this movement against the raise in bus fares, that occurs all over the country this month?Positive in several aspects. First of all, it demonstrates that the public transport it is already on the list of people’s worries and also of the left wing. The need of displacement is not anymore a minor problem, actually, is now in the center of attention. How to go to work, how to go to the places of study and teach, how to go to leisure places, it’s now a fundamental question to solve the gap between rich and poor, the inequality in brazilian cities. All these demonstrations, that grows initially against the raise of the bus fares, opens wide perspectives beyond the percentage of the growth in itself. In the beginning of 2000, the “Revolta do Buzu” (Bus Riot) in Salvador and the Campanha pelo Passe Livre (Campaign for the Free Pass – for students) in Florianópolis, gave to us the outset that we needed to get deep in our comprehension about the true social exclusion that results of the way the mass transport works nowadays.The spark can grow from the fight for the free pass for students, or against a bus fare raise, or even against the cut of a bus route, but sooner gets to a consensus that public transport is a right that must be offered for all of the people without the charge of the fare. Another positive aspect of these recent demonstrations, is that it shows that this problem is a social class problem, it’s a problem of the workers, of the marginalized, it’s a problem of Brazil. These protests are happening in distant cities from each other, like Porto Alegre and Aracaju, and being organized through several different organizations, nonpartisan and partisan, or social movements that already carry this fight a long time ago, as MPL.
A recent research of IPEA (Institute of Applied Economic Research) shows that the waste with transport is equal the waste with food, and that the raise of the bus fares makes 30% of brazilian people not use the service. Is there any perspectives of changes in this scenario?Yes, there is perspective. Because there is political will from sections of the population. But only because of this. Depending on the governments there is no way out. When Lula, the last brazilian president, said that “the people who defends investments in trains and subways want ‘that the poor let the street free to them’, in march of 2010, when he was on the Petrochemical Complex of Rio, I felt that the way to reverse this scenario that IPEA showed to us, will be the pressure of social movements towards governments, we can’t expect nothing for free from the State. Fact it is, that the automobile industry has a strong influence on the economy of the country, and the governments, progressists or not, don’t want to fight this industry. The governments don’t comprehend the public transport as a right, but as a mechanical way of throw people from one side to otherside. Gather this with the strength of the automakers and we have an explosive scenario. But, when the transport is more expensive than eat, the people reacts. The exclusion pushes people, makes life difficult, and sooner of later, we testify and participate in riots. The difference it is that year after year people are getting more conscious about the transport system. The matter of the value of the fare is just a beginning, what we must question it is the existence of the fare in itselfIn São Paulo, the demonstration last Thursday (02/27) resulted in a promise by the local government: a public hearing with the city council and the municipal secretary of transports. What does that mean for the movement against the raise of the bus fares?The way the police acted against demonstrators in the protest, gratuitous violence, rubber bullets, pepper spray and gas bombs, made the next demonstrations grow. From 1.000 of people, now we are counting with 4.000. Maybe we can count with 5 or 10.000 in the next one, who knows? When you are side by side with thousands of people, there’s nothing but optimism. This fact in itself, it is very pedagogic, shows that, collectively, we can conquer things and demands. Going to the city council and win this promise of a public hearing means one step forward for the fight. It’s important to combine the spontaneity of the fight in the streets with the achievement in itself. Not that the public hearing means that the price is going back to his last value, but it’s a sign that the movement want to ensure that his claim will be accepted and not that he only want to protest against something. Imagine the force that the movement will have when in the next demonstration, on the City Council, thousands of people start scream: "Now we want to change the transportation system, we're organized and we want to see these changes happening in practice".Now it’s happening a national Twitter protest against the raise of the bus fares. In this fight, which is the role of the social networks?
The social networks are really a kind of public space nowadays. Some say that once we lived in the countryside, then cities and now online. This sentence is very excessive, thankfully, but we can’t deny that internet offers us this facility with organization and communication. While the Twitter protest happened, I heard about new cities that were organizing demonstrations just like us. I see those social networks as a complement of the old and good way: posters and pamphlets distributed in the streets. But in this case, from Florianópolis, South of Brazil, I could “distribute pamphlet” to people in Roraima, extreme North.
Original from: http://www.brasildefato.com.br/node/5553

Free Fare! The possible reality.

When a system goes into crisis, all outputs are merely palliative historical patches, which soon will bust before the torrential river of History. And faced with a crisis of a system, it is those who always challenged to state clearly what are their strategic perspectives to a new system. That is, a system that is consistent with their historical moment, and with the needs of the society that uses it.

Florianópolis lived two moments of profound radicalization in the city in 2004 and 2005. Two intense uprisings: of week-long confrontation, with brutal state violence, with arbitrary arrests, illegal use of arms, etc... These revolts were an expression of wear, the "failure" - not in the financial sense, but social and moral - of Urban Public Transportation System.

They exposed a fundamental and unsustainable situation: the need for a real public mass transportation, toward the interests of developing society, of the productive forces in general, and the reality of a system falsely "public", controlled by oligarchic and delayed families - or even by large international corporations - which are governed primarily by profit, not the res publica. That is, public transport is seen as a huge market, a source of ownership of fat slices of the budget of families, a source of economic and political power. And as such, it is interesting that this system is maintained for the same groups.

It turns out that in society there is class struggle. And in this struggle that is a contradiction between opposing interests, and that every exploration has its limits. And the limit of exploration on public transport has reached its maximum degree.

Besides the historical “Revoltas da Catraca” (the name which are called the revolts where popular demands were guaranteed) in 2004 and 2005 in Florianopolis, the “Uprising of Buzú” in Salvador in 2003, and similar uprisings that toppled or challenged rates in Vitoria (ES) 2005, Uberlândia (MG) 2005, Criciuma (SC) 2005 Fortaleza (CE) in 2005, and Recife (PE) in 2005, showed that this is an inevitable wave. At that moment Brasília (DF) and Aracaju (SE) are fighting against a rate increase in urban transport. And this wave will not stop, mainly due to the concrete fact of 38 million Brazilians have no access to transport due to its rates, and that number grows every time that the prices increases.

Solution exists. It depends on a successful combination of factors: popular mobilization, strategic design of a model transport system, and also direction and political determination to implement it. From the standpoint of popular mobilization, there is an expectation rather positive, as the balance of two consecutive wins (2004-05), and the great show of strength of the population in the two revolts. From the viewpoint of the model we need to make a broad discussion in society. Our determination is to dare. Think of transportation as essential public service. Public transportation should be removed from the hands of private companies as key element to overcome the agenda of profitability, which is the core issue that excludes millions of transportation. Transport must be managed by government agencies, municipalities, aimed at the interests of the community, and ruled in another form of financing.

Setember, 2009.

Marcelo Nascimento Pomar is a brazilian historian and one of the founders of Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) or "Fare Free Movement" in Brazil.

Original article in brazilian portuguese: http://tarifazero.org/2009/09/07/tarifa-zero-a-realidade-possivel/