Please help us #changebrazil
We just saw these news on Brazilian TV while eating at a restaurant in San Diego; I had to ask our waitress to explain:
#changebrazil is about the fact that while government officials are making 17,000 R$/mo (plus luxurious personal expenses), the average person makes circa 600 R$/mo at minimum wage!
People in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are now protesting the straw that broke the camel’s back: the fact that bus fares are going up 20 centavos. This doesn’t sound significant because it’s the tip of the iceberg. The daily reality is that people are lying sick on hospital floors rather than beds, and those are the lucky ones who are not ordered to take public transportation to another hospital while requiring immediate bedrest and medical attention. Education and teachers don’t have sufficient funds and learning materials to raise future generations. Poverty and health conditions are appalling. All the while, politicians, who are to represent people’s interest, merely feed their own interests, even create fake jobs for friends and family, paying out money for nothing, while the rest of the country suffers.
In addition, people who live around the area where the Olympics are to be hosted, are being evicted from their homes to make room. Anyone who would stand in the way, including women and children, will be met with everything from crowd dispersion techniques to gun fire.
A bill is being drafted right now, which if passed, will render the organization which keeps politicians in check, the Supremo Tribunal Federal, to be completely useless, giving politicians free reign.
This kind of misuse of resources (financial et al) and power has gone on for tool long and the people are sick of it!
What we, the world, can do to help, is exert international pressure on Brazil to change. Do that via Twitter, Facebook, {any blogging}, … be creative.
The only way, aside from being the change, is to participate in the activities which make our lives better and free us from arbitrary constructs, and plain stupid controls as well as so-called leaders and businesses whose only vision is to serve their own interests at the expense of people and environment! Such vision has no future.