Brazil Protests Back Despite Proposed ReformsProtesters on Tuesday returned to the streets in low-income suburbs of Brazil’s biggest city to demand better education, transport and health services, one day after President Dilma Rousseff proposed a wide range of actions to reform Brazil’s political system and services.
Mary O’Grady’s take on the continuing demonstrations:
Behind Brazil’s Civil Unrest
Radicals use popular discontent to push President Dilma Rousseff into following more statist policies.
it is worth asking who neatly arranged for the roadblocks and vandalism that broke out across the country after an annual increase in bus fares. There is solid evidence to suggest that it came from disillusioned and radical groups on Ms. Rousseff’s left. Protests in Porto Alegre, for example, began under the leadership of the likes of the Socialist and Freedom Party, which was formed by former PT members expelled for resisting Lula’s pension reform.
Using an anti-status-quo message and social media, organizers have not found it difficult to attract young people of many political persuasions. It is likely that most of them don’t know they are being used.
Back in the day, Dilma herself may have been one of the users.
