Promote debates and monitor public policies and actions that involve the fight against racism and racial inequality throughout Brazil. This is the objective of the Joint Anti-Racism Parliamentary Front, installed this Tuesday morning (11), in the National Congress. The group is made up of 147 senators and deputies, coordinated by Senator Paulo Paim (PT-RS), in the Federal Senate, and in the Federal Chamber, by Deputy Dandara (PT-MG).
“It is a symbolic date for Brazil, for all of us. After today, Congress will be different, because it has a large group in defense of the black population. We, here on this front, are going to make history”, said Paim.
The Minister of Racial Equality, Anielle Franco, highlighted the weight of this representativeness. “We know the size of the importance we have and the size of the responsibility of being here, representing a people which is, for the most part, the part of the population that suffers the most”.
After installation, together, everyone marched through the corridors of the Federal Senate, towards the Green Room, in the Chamber, with the slogan “Without overcoming racism, there is no democracy”. And “United black people, strong black people, who are not afraid of fighting, who are not afraid of death!”
Group is coordinated by senator Paulo Paim – Lula Marques/Agência Brasil
“I hope that in a few years we will come back and be able to reassess this front, that we will add more and more people, because the fight against racism in Brazil is not restricted to black people. It is a social commitment, the commitment of everyone who is present in this territory”, said Geography professor João Luiz Pedrosa, who participated in the walk.
The president of the Brazilian Union of Secondary Students (Ubes), Jade Beatriz, defended the agenda of universal access to higher education. “The front will be responsible for defending the revision of the Quota Law, the expansion of the reserve within universities for our people and, mainly, the construction of more affirmative actions that allow us to have more access to education”, he celebrated she.
History professor and co-founder of the Union of Popular Education Centers for Blacks and the Working Class (Uneafro), Douglas Belchior, recalled that the anti-racist struggle is very old. “We can say that today we have a quilombo within the National Congress, from this Anti-Racist Mixed Front. We want black people in all spaces, but in spaces of power. We want black people who have their feet planted in the territories, in the favelas, in the communities and with their heads in the National Congress”.
