Rio de Janeiro: MFP holds action and leaflet distribution rejecting violence against women
The activity was carried out with posters, banners, a microphone, and leaflet distribution. The Popular Women’s Movement (MFP) held a demonstration rejecting violence against women on March 7 in Rio de Janeiro. The political action also included the presence of the Anti-Imperialist League (LAI) and the movement Mothers of Manguinhos, and is part of the campaign “Enough of violence against women now!”, whose purpose is to condemn and reject any aggression committed against the women of the people, mobilize the masses in this direction, and celebrate International Proletarian Women’s Day (March 8).
Through the microphone, an activist representing the MFP said:
“On March 8 we will celebrate International Working Women’s Day, the women who sustain their homes, the women who support their families, who have double or triple workdays […] we know how much violence women endure from their own partners inside their homes […] and those whose lives are being affected, whose lives are being taken. That is why we [from the MFP] have launched this campaign, so that women organize themselves in this vigorous movement, in this vigorous campaign to defend women’s lives through revolutionary legitimate self-defense.”
In her intervention, she denounced the situation women face daily in order to avoid becoming victims of femicide, such as carrying non-lethal weapons for self-defense in their bags or avoiding sitting next to men on public transportation.
“That is why we call for this campaign of solidarity but also for the organization of all working women on this March 8, International Working Women’s Day. Notice: not of all women, but of the working women of our people, the women who sustain this country’s economy either through their labor or through domestic work that is made invisible. It is the women who sustain this entire country. […] It is not the day of reactionary women, enemies of the people, police officers, killers, who are also those who enter the communities and take the lives of poor youth from the favelas, of Black youth. The murderous police are also composed of women, and those do not struggle at our side.”
The activity was carried out with posters, banners, a microphone, and leaflet distribution. The activists raised a large banner reading: “Enough of violence against women! Awaken the revolutionary fury of women!”, and also displayed a banner from the Anti-Imperialist League (LAI) against imperialist aggression in Venezuela, which read: “Yankees out of Latin America!”
In addition, they raised placards with photos and names of the revolutionary leader Sandra Lima, the comrade Helenira Resende, who took part in the glorious Araguaia guerrilla, and the girl Ágatha Félix, who was murdered by the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro in 2019. The activists also distributed leaflets denouncing that the brutal system of oppression and exploitation that sustains misogyny and machismo in Brazilian society has its roots in the archaic, semi-feudal character and in the bureaucratic, backward, and decaying capitalism of our country.
In the printed document that was distributed, the MFP points out that in Brazilian society a rotten culture prevails and reproduces itself, made up of prejudices, racism against Black people and Indigenous peoples, misogyny, machismo, and permissiveness toward violence against women, as well as all kinds of discriminatory judgments against the poor. The distributed document can be found on the MFP website.
In a report to the local correspondent of AND who was present at the demonstration, Fátima Pinho of the Mothers of Manguinhos movement commented on the importance of the campaign:
“We are here today making this demonstration, bringing it to the population so they wake up, so they don’t think this is right, so they do not remain silent, especially the women who live in the favelas, outside the favelas and in the peripheries, because they have the right to live, the right to speak and express themselves. […] And they really must speak, because staying silent is becoming very difficult.”
She concluded her testimony:
“So let’s pay more attention to this and worry a bit more about women, because we are not dolls to be used and abused while people think what they are doing is right.”
Source information: https://anovademocracia.com.br/rj-mfp-faz-ato-e-panfletagem-rechacando-violencia-contra-a-mulher/
