Makota Kadoiale is one of the leaders of Quilombo Manzo, in Belo Horizonte. Founded in 1972, this resistance community of formerly enslaved people was only recognized as such in 2007, after much struggle by the community.

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Roots Ativa (Active Roots) started as a meeting of friends to promote environmental consciousness and generate income among youth from the peripheries of Belo Horizonte, prioritizing elements of Rastafari culture.

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TransVest is a non-profit organization in Belo Horizonte that prepares travestis from the capital and surrounding region for the college entrance exam and gives elective courses, as well as aiding in the legal processes and psychological support for the population.

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“We put someone in government, but we also put on external pressure.” Keep women alive. This is the challenge of those responsible for the Tina Martins House, an independent reference center that gives legal and psychological support and houses women who are in vulnerable situation or were victims of domestic violence. The House was founded in 2016, when women occupied an abandoned public building in Belo Horizonte with the aim of raising awareness about the cases of femicide in Brazil. The occupation, which was supposed to be symbolic, lasted 87 days. “When the federal government asked for the house back, we said, well, you are going to give us something else,” Clarice Filgueiras, one of the people responsible for the project, said. According to her, there was no way that the public authorities could go regress after they had built relationships with other women. Today, the Tina Martins House is a reference for governmental organs, even though it currently has little support from the state. The proposal is to keep pressuring and revealing the possibilites that spring from the real demands of the population.

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Much of what he knows, Flavio Paiva – known as ‘Russo’ – learned on the streets. Born into an evangelical family, he became involved with the punk movement. With the involvement of a family member in drug trafficking he related what happened to Racionais’s rap lyrics to GOG. It was the cue to engage in the Hip Hop movement where he met himself. Rapper and educator active in the movement since 1999, Russo has already participated in different collectives, councils, forums and has applied for being a councilman on the last municipal elections. Three years ago in Ibirité (metropolitan region of BH), he joined young people from the Terra Firme collective, a kind of peripheral incubator with courses, workshops and event production that aims to give visibility to other cultural groups organized by youth in public spaces . People want the youth to be in front of their screens, inside the house, they want to take the youth out of the street, but it is the street that socializes, that makes us human beings. If you take everyone out of the street, you kill humanity, “says Russo, for whom the street is key.

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The politics came to Danusa Carvalho on the 70’s, the age of military dictatorship. She became a teenage activist involved with culture, worked with different artists in Brazil and contributed to the creation of some public policies that we have today. Now she is one of the members of Associação Arebeldia Cultural, an initiative founded by rapper Flavio Renegado in Alto Vera Cruz (a neighborhood in Belo Horizonte) that encourages protagonism, fosters education, professional training and community participation of vulnerability group.

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The year of 1991 mark the beginning Brazil’s redemocratization era. Social movements debate demands of historically neglected Brazilian black population. In Belo Horizonte, a social group related to religions of African matrices draws attention to the matter of considering African subjectivity and religiosity on these political processes. “The system machine is very blind,” says Makota Celinha Gonçalves, national coordinator from Cenarab – National Center for African-Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian Resistance. “The machine say: ‘I can not give you a door because the State is secular’, but it gives to the other [for one hegemonic religion] because historically that other is part of the State.” Cenarab, founded in Minas Gerais’ capital city, is nowadays organized in 18 states and aims to form leaderships to combat religious intolerance, prejudice and discrimination through strengthening these traditional communities and elaborates public policies for its preservation. “Our ancestors had a strategy in our religiosity to guarantee the sacredness of the Orixá. They had a strategy to understand that when they got here, they already had an owner. We need this strategy, “says Father Ricardo de Mouro, one of the directors of the organization.

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“The right to land and housing guaranteed by law needs directa actions as a gear for the urban reform. This is what engage Movimento de Lutas nos Bairros (MLB), in the Belo Horizonte peripheries and other locations. The movement advocates to housing rights and human rights to live in dignity. Formed by thousands of homeless people across the country, MLB believes that the housing crisis is capable of mobilizing thousands of people, pressing the government and calling attention to the issues faced by poor people in big cities. Therefore, the social movement advocates occupation of idle real state as a way to develop the sense of collectivity. “If we do not show in practice that we are different, we do not innovate. the criterion of truth is practice” – Leo Péricles, member of MLB.

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After years below the surface, Belo Horizonte’s Street Carnaval resurges with force in the 2000s, bringing with it a debate about the right to the city and the occupation of public space. And also along with it, diverse identity movements resurge among black people, women and the LGBTQ population. In other spaces, like the universities, these debates also amplify. A series of initiatives arises out of this process. The LGBTQ population organized a unified front potentialize its discourse and amplify its effect, occupying space on municipal and state councils or taking part in legislative mandates. “When you recognize your history and the history of those that are by your side, you are capable of making proposals,” say the members of the LGBTQ Autonomous Front in the city.

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Laura Barroso Gomes´s relation with nature comes from childhood, when she accompanied her grandgather to the fields. This proximity with plant based food itself influenced her choices for graduation in Biological Sciences. But it was in Agroecology that she founded herself. In years working with local farmers in agricultural land reforms project, she was invited to work in the Alternative Tecnologies Exchange Network (REDE).

The organization has 32 years old (the same age as Laura), and arises in the redemocratization of the Country with the articulation of alternative farmers in in the other hand of agribusiness. From these meetings, other organizations emerge from the countryside of Minas Gerais. And REDE begins a project of urban agriculture in the central area of Belo Horizonte – a pioneering initiative that influenced other networks and projects in Brazil, focused on the discussion of public policies on food security and right to the city.

Today, in addition to structuring small families of producers/farmers and generating income, REDE has partners in public positions, presence in local councils, committees and universities. “Slowly, we get there,” says Laura. The theme of healthy food is in the city hall, in the novel … Agroecology is pop, it’s tech, it’s everything!

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Do the civil society organizations you know acts for the emancipation of people or for the maintenance of things as they are?

In 1997, a group of young journalists graduated at PUC-Minas decided to gather participants’ experiences with photography and video to discuss the role of the media in the political formation of youth and educators. This resulted in the Oficina de Imagens, an organization that works to guarantee the rights of children, adolescents and young people of Belo Horizonte using communication and education tools.

“It is a presupposition of the exercise of citizenship to have a critical view of media and critical appropriation of technology,” observes Bernardo Brant, one of the members of Oficina de Imagem, for whom this emancipation will happen with a molecular revolution, starting from small groups.

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Innovating doesn’t necessarily mean reinventing the wheel, but rather doing what needs to be done with what you have. And this is at the root of Fa.Vela, an accelerator from Minas Gerais. Started in Papagaio hill (center-south of Belo Horizonte), today it stimulates and trains entrepreneurs from other favelas in Belo Horizonte based on the demands and potentialities of each territory. However, even if the population knows that guaranteeing the basics is a big advance, this is not always the case in institutional politics. “The system is not based on pro-activity and the smooth resolution of problems. If a councilperson brings up a demand today, it will have to pass through so much to become a solution. I am afraid the system would swallow me and harden me,” noted João Souza, who founded Fa.Vela alongside Tatiana Silva. On the other hand, movements like the Muitxs, who in 2016 were able to elect two new council women in the capital of Minas Gerais without funding and with a lot of mobilization, help organize these spaces and show that once again the daily challenges indicate the paths to be followed. “Political innovation is autonomous candidacies from and for the favelas and peripheries,” João notes.

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Santuário dos Pajés (Healer’s Sanctuary) is an indigenous territory of three large ethnicities that sits to the northwest of the city of Brasília. It is a territory that resists and fights against unbridled real estate speculation. Its leader, Fetaxá Verissimo, is a young man who inspires his community and us alike!

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Casa Frida (Frida’s Hosue) is located in São Sebastião (a periphery of Brasília) and is much more than a cultural space, offering refuge to women who are victims of violence.

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Imagine that you are young and lives in the fifth worst city for young people in Brazil. What would you do about it?

Gabriel Fidelis, 25, did not stand still. Born in Brasília, he moved with his parents to Luziânia, a municipality in Goiás that is part of the Entorno – an urban region that covers cities of Goiás and the Federal District that are influenced by the capital.

In 2014, when Luziânia was appointed as a municipality with high youth vulnerability, Gabriel joined other youths to demand a Youth City Council to participate in the city’s decisions, which was created only last year. Meanwhile, they occupied a public area to create a cultural center and Gabriel was a candidate for councilman in the last municipal election. He was not elected, but he also did not give up to occupy these spaces.

“You do not have to be too smart to think about what is the problem that is killing this youth, that is making that youth fade. It’s not very difficult. So the change has to start from the state.” he says.

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Mateus Santana, 26, recognizes himself as a political person since he understood that he was a black resident of the periphery – and what it means: the act of existing and resisting on a daily basis. Born and raised in North Samambaia, satellite city of Brasilia, he is responsible for the O’Beco Cultural. Where daily activities take place, including capoeira, skateboarding, basketball, English and a monthly slam without any governmental support.

Mateus hopes that the space will be recognized as a place of coexistence and consolidation of identities in Taguatinga. Strengthening those who live in the Brazilian ravines. “The black body standing is a political act, because we never know when it will be the next [to fall],” he says. And from his gullet, he believes that the change in the political system will happen when the peripheries and the black people organize themselves to be no longer a base, but protagonists of the process. “There are a lot of people who just need an opportunity, they just need a door, a window, a lock to get in.”

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A big part of the bricks used in the construction of Brasília was made from the potteries of São Sebastião. And it is in reference to the history of this satellite city of federal capital that the Popular Brigades baptized its home. The Cultural Pottery, a collective and collaborative space created to promote human rights, to allow the exchange of ideas and to provide services to the community, as well as cultural activities.

The poet Tiago Xavier began writing in high school and is now the production coordinator of the space, created in early 2017. For him, the challenge is to compete with the TV the time. Therefore, the Cultural Pottery holds saraus in squares and schools, workshops and sambas presentation in open air. More than coexistence, the space allows policy – after all, of the 3 million residents of the Federal District, less than 10% lives in the Plano Piloto. “The one hundred power is us, it’s us already. Now, we just stop being the driver of the powerful and be the powerful ones themselves. ” notes Tiago.

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Lucas Pinheiro is hip hop creator of Distrito Federal, land of exponents like GOG. And today he believes in the mobilization of resources as a political tool for transforming his gully.

Living in Ceilândia, he organizes events since 2009, while still in high school. Afterwards, he organized big parties with friends, worked in NGOs sector in Florianópolis, was a night club promoter in Argentina and when he came back, he created the MUB Produtora – Movimento Undergound de Brasília with six other friends, with the aim of moving the cultural scene of the peripheries of Distrito Federal.

Over time, the producer began to hold workshops to train new agents and to promote local artists as well. “We grew up with friends who were rhyming, we attended the battles from the beginning and we saw there are needs for production and performance that was not just for money,” says Lucas.

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30 kilometers from the Plano Piloto, the “noble” region of Brasilia, almost half a million people lives in the shadow of stereotypes: Ceilândia, which like many other peripheries in the country is considered a territory of violence. But in Ceilândia em Foco, a community newspaper with a circulation of 10,000 copies per month, the headlines are different. “We have a column called ‘Diva’, for example, where monthly we bring a woman who does something for the community,” explains Pamela Paiva, one of the newspaper’s members.

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Ivanete Silva dos Santos is from Brasília, but she moved with her family to Rondônia in the late 1980s. In the North region, she met the struggles of Chico Mendes, an activist who inspired her political activities. After his death and the return of Ivanete to Brasília, she began to work in unions and went to college. But something was missing: one had to turn to the environmental question, as did Chico Mendes. With no space in trade unionism, Ivanete sought out large NGOs, but he had no room. So she founded her own organization. Today, the Nature House promotes playful activities with children from 9 to 14 years and their families in Ceilândia with the goal of promoting environmental awareness. But Ivanete continues to dream: she wants to extend this project to the whole square, the surroundings of Brasilia.

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The Bahia’s riverine Juraci Moura has been related to art since childhood, through capoeira. For 33 years living in the Federal District, he was already an adult who went back to art and started studying music. Researching about tambourines, he came to the production of musical instruments with recicle paper and other disposable materials. Thus, the Sound of Paper was born, a musical band that uses percussion instruments made of paper: zabumba, pandeiro, brazilian drum, and others. More than that, it is a group and open space that uses art to discuss environmental issues and political mobilization in region of Taguatinga. “The market is producing enough raw material that turns waste and has no reuse. And people are rebuilding, rebuilding that path, right? ” reflects him, who works with instrument workshops in schools to discuss it. “It’s an spoiler of future, it’s about young people who are going to be interested in doing things differently.”

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Close to power, far from decision making. But not for long. Max Maciel is 35 and lives in Ceilândia, a satellite city of Brasília, the federal capital. He is a social entrepreneur and trained teacher who specializes in race and gender public policy management. He coordinates the Urban Network for Sociocultural Action (RUAS, or STREETS in Portuguese). He has been fighting for change for 17 years in this place within the federal capital’s scenario of inequality. He is a candidate for the district congress in 2018.

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In São Sebastião, satellite city of Brasilia, a community vegetable garden was born in 2004 after the death of a resident by hantavirus, a virus transmitted by rats through urine, feces or saliva. The problem is where there is garbage, has rats. This was the limit for Morro Azul community to gather and act to change this scenario. Take out the trash and rubble in the garden. With only five participants at the beginning, today Horta Girassol involves 30 families. Everyone is integrated: men, women and even children, who help to watering. In addition to raising the self-esteem of the neighbors and serving as therapy for participants, the garden yields results even in the pocket, since buying vegetables at the supermarket is no longer necessary – the crop yields lettuce, chives, coriander, manioc and some fruits. Also, the clean place brought more tranquility in the neighborhood. Crimes have become rare, in opposition to street fights which were frequent. The asphalt and sewage collection have not yet reached periphery of the federal capital, but in a small piece of this neighborhood the neighbors understood what is live in community. For Hosana Alves, who is part of the group and will be running for a legislative position in this year’s elections, initiatives like this are what we need to address and empower. “You have to listen people, work together with people, see the demands,” she says. “People scream, ask, it’s visible for everyone, doesn’t see and listen who doesn’t wanna.”

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Rayne da Silva Soares has been in Expressive Youth for five years. She entered as a student in the audio-visual workshop at the recommendation of a friend. She became an employee and is now on the management team. The program was created in 2007, based on research that showed how violence impacts youth. Its social technology joined health promotion and the creative potential of people aged 18 to 29, who have a unique capacity to generate responses. The organization promotes the collaboration and autonomy of youth through workshops and cultural actions. For Rayane, who is trained in pedagogy and whose first contact with politics happened through the student movement at her school, the political leaders of the future will come out of spaces like this one. “Change is going to come from the state government, but not from the people who are there now. Change will come from the people who are entering the universities, the youth who are doing grassroots work in the communities and occupying those spaces. The people in there now don’t want to change, no they don’t,” she said.

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Mestra Joana is a reference in Brazilian popular culture, as she is the first woman to lead a Maracatu nation the size of Encanto do Pina. She also acts directly in the area of women’s empowerment in her territory, inviting young girls to do what they were previously prevented from doing.

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Dulcineia is part of the Casa Amarela Healthy and Sustainable Institute – ICASS, a community association that transformed an empty and idle land into a vegetable garden for the community, as well as mobilizing the actions of residents of the neighborhood focused on healthy and sustainable living practices and habits.

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In “Totó” community in Recife, there is a hospital, a prison, a cemetery, but there was only one place for children and young people to learn other horizons. It was then that the Colors of Tomorrow entered, with socio-educational activities, workshops of art, graphite and positive reconstruction of the territory.

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The poet Patrícia Naia, originally from São Paulo, lives in Recife where she is studying literature in the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). A former private school student, in that environment at age 13 she perceived that she was part of a minority and that something was not right. “And then I started to write,” she remembers. And she filled notebooks with her writings, typed them onto the computer and then published them on a blog. “Something came to me about writing literature for women, and opening more and more space where women can access literature and share what they write,” she remembers. In August of 2017, she got together with another friend to organize an edition of the São Paulo Slam das Minas in Recife. Slam das Minas, the first poetry competition in Recife led by women, exceeded expectations. More than 300 people showed up in the center of the city. The challenge now is going out to where the girls that participated live, in the peripheries, to write poetry with them and seek effective transformation. Verses are Patrícia’s political tool. “We have a cry inside us and nowhere to yell,” she said.

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Recife was built on rivers and mangroves, but like many other Brazilian big city also turned back to natural resources. with consequences for those ones who lives in these areas. For this reason, in Ilha de Deus (a community of 5,000 inhabitants), fishing is a form of resistance against real estate speculation, pollution of water and the criminalization of poverty. “100% of the residents live of fishing – if they do not live directly, they already fished one day. Speaking specifically about women, it is much more complex “, explains Eloísa Amaral, who acts as educator in one of the projects of Community Action Caranguejo Uçá. The association was created in 2002 by a group of friends who joined to continue a struggle for survival that has always been carried out by women in the community, such as education and health. So, they created a community radio. With loudspeakers and a microphones in the streest, they have open spaces for discussions about political issues and the importance of organizing themselves to make improvements for the community. Today, in addition to the radio, the Uçá Caranguejo has Jornal da Maré (a monthly program broadcasted by Recife University TV and recorded on Ilha de Deus), the Cine Mocambo (with weekly exibitions), the Maracatu group called Nação da Ilha, the theater group Trilha and the Ciranda de Mulheres, which Eloísa participate. “The great challenge for us is to adapt and mobilize these women, to show that this reality is so difficult for women and for us, women in general, can be minimized when they do not have the support of the others and are aware of your rights”, points out Heloise.

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“We have an opportunity for transformation if we pass the reform in Congress, too.” – Luiza Batista Pereira, Domestic Worker’s Union (Recife) During a sleepless night, Luiza Batista Pereira woke up to politics. She stayed up unable to stop thinking about what she heard from the president of the Domestic Worker’s Union in Recife. “So this means that my retirement, since I did not participate in the struggle, didn’t come so easily?” she asked herself. The daughter of poor farmers, Luiza started work as a domestic employee when she was 9. She did not live her childhood. When she was 36, she got breast cancer and had to spend some time away from her job. That was when she learned about the Union. After that, when she ended a relationship that had lasted 21 years and after almost entering into depression, she decided to go back to school, taking course through union. It was a watershed in my life, how wonderful!” With her children out of the house and having retired at 43 due to disability, Luzia decided to join the Union. And she started to live. She continued her studies, participated in protests in Brasília and seminars and, in 2009, was invited to run for president of the organization. She won and is now serving in her third term. Under her leadership, the Union won many collective victories including protections pregnant domestic workers, 30 days vacation, the right to take holidays off and a constitutional amendment that recognizes her class. Today, at age 62, Luzia knows that there is still much to be done given the regression around the guarantee of rights and the racism, chauvinism and LGBT-phobia that structure society. To her this means occupying spaces of power. “We don’t only fight for us, we also fight beside the minority that is persecuted, the minority in rights.”

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Elisângela grew up in Peixinhos, but never had accesses the whole neighborhood while she was a child. That is because in this poor region of Recife, rival gangs competing about territory and restricted the movement of residents. The limit line was a road and you could not cross from one side to the other without authorization. Violence is part of the population’s routine. Nearly 300 youth have been murdered in the last three decades. Elisângela’s brother was one of them. In his time between prison sentences, he did not re-socialized well and eventually another group made an attempt on his life. He was able to escape death, left the state and start over far from his family. Involved with social projects since she was twelve years old, Elisângela knew that she needed to do something. She started with people who was suffering because have lost children to violence, creating Mães da Saudade (Mothers Missing Children) ten years ago. The group supports 60 mothers who have lost their sons to murder. “We help mothers with legal questions, so they can seek for justice against the crime that took their children,” she explains. Beyond that, they host conversation circles, dialogues, and regenerative circles, emotional work to help mothers move through a trauma whose impacts extend far beyond the graveside. And Elisângela knows that her work plays a role in doing significant changes. “There is a serious problem with the denial of rights happening today. The lack of public policies for prevention, which I think is a huge challenge. We have been talking about prevention since we started working. We are going through a moment of significant collapse because the politicians and legal representatives have no commitment to this” – she comments.

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Mãe Beth de Oxum was born, raised and still lives in the Guadalupe neighborhood of Olinda. That is where she does politics. Lalorixá priestiess in a traditional Afro- Brazilian religious space called a terreiro, she has also hosted the Sambada de Coco dance in Guadalupe for the past 20 years. Because of this work, today she also coordinates the Coco de Umbigada Cultural Center. The Center is home to independent media actions, a recording studio, a community radio, a laboratory for independent technologies and citizen innovation and a restaurant. “I am a woman, a mother with many children, some of which I had and others I didn’t, and I am on this front line here, with culture, with religion and with the perspective that we can transform our terreiro into a place that is more like us, blacker, more Afro-Brazilian, that looks like us and includes our perspective on the city,” she said. In a state that kills 60,000 people per year — the majority of whom are black youth — Mãe Beth sees the most pressing challenge as passing public policies that meet the demands of the population. Because of this, in a context of violence, she wants culture to be the protagonist that can renew relationships and preserve symbols. ”It is here in the terreiro that everything happens, that the confrontations happen, rights violations, racism, violence. So it is here that we have to transform, before we can transform the country. We have to transform the place where we live.” Right to existence Elisângela grew up in Peixinhos, but never accessed the whole neighborhood when she was a child. That is because in this poor region of Recife, rival gangs disputed the territory and restricted the movement of residents. The dividing line was a road and you could not cross from one side to the other without authorization. Violence is part of the population’s routine. Nearly 300 youth have been assassinated in the last three decades. Elisângela’s brother was almost one of them. In his time between prison sentences, he did not re-socialize well and eventually another group made an attempt on his life. He was able to escape death, left the state and started over far from his family. Involved with social projects since she was twelve years old, Elisângela knew that she needed to do something. She started with people suffering because they had lost children to violence, creating Mães da Saudade (Mothers Missing Children) ten years ago. The group supports 60 mothers who have lost their sons to homicide. “We help mothers with legal questions, so that they can seek justice for the crime that took their children,” she explains. Beyond that, they host conversation circles, dialogues, and restorative circles that do emotional work to help mothers move through a trauma whose impacts extend far beyond the graveside. And Elisângela knows that her work plays a role in making significant changes. “There is a serious problem with the denial of rights happening today. The lack of policies for prevention, which I think is a huge challenge. We have been talking about prevention since we started working. We are going through a moment of significant collapse because the politicians and legal representatives have no commitment to this,” she comments.

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Cleia Santos is a brave woman. Diarist, artisan, maid, she has done everything in her life. Since 1980s, she has participated in groups that discuss women’s rights, and when she arrived in the Passarinho community (in Olinda) in 1997, she was no different: with other women, she discussed domestic violence in a van. Then they met in other places beyond the van, helded workshops, discussed infrastructure such as access to water, light, housing. The militancy paid off, Cleia’s companions were called to lectures and audiences, and even to an event in Spain. In 2015, inspired by the Ocupe Estelita movement (in the central region of Recife), Cleia created the Ocupe Passarinho – an activist action with participation of several black, feminist and right-to-city movements, in order to fight for the right to land and houses of 5 thousand families who live in the Passarinho community. One of the struggles was for public lighting, nonexistent in that region, which provoked violence against women, such as rape. More than that, today the women of Ocupe Passarinho discuss the reinforcement in transportation, the need for daycare centers, the care in the health posts and the conservation of the river that cuts the neighborhood. “When we make a question about gender, about women’s health, about woman’s body, about her right to come and go, we’re talking about politics” – says Cleia.

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On the border between Recife and Olinda was a slaughterhouse. And around this slaughterhouse, communities like Beberibe and Peixinhos were developed, where more than 40 thousand people live. The region is marked by the historic and victorious struggle of local leaders against the installation of a trash transfer station near the river in the 1980s. One of the results is the Boca do Lixo Cultural Movement, which makes direct reference to the historical landmarks: in addition to the fight against garbage, the movement occupied the building of the old slaughterhouse and transformed it into a “hatchery”. It is in this place that Daniel Pereira understood himself as a political subject. He began going to punk shows in the “nascedouro” still adolescent, went to work in the Multicultural Library of Peixinhos created by the movement, went to college and works in the municipal councils of Recife and Olinda. And you, where did you understand yourself as a political subject?

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The neighborhood of Pina has the most expensive square meter in Recife and one of the most expensive in the country. Contradictory, among alleys and alleys hidden behind high-standard buildings, more than 3 thousand families live in stilt houses on the mangrove. And under these conditions, a group of young people used the “pixo” and the graffiti to confront the speculation real estate and to discuss right to the city. From the urban interventions, the collective begins to appear and occupy places of decision making. Today, the Palaffite Cultural Center exchanges idea of ​​equal to equal in spaces of power. “They try to make a hidden policy. But for me, political innovation is community-based. It is a collective mandate. It is a cut of all segments within a collective mandate. It is to listen to minorities and neglected populations within the community, “says Stilo Santos, one of the responsible for the Palaffite, which works on creating a plaque to contest the Legislative Assembly and the House of Representatives in 2018.

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How did you discover that you were a political being? The Afronte Collective discusses ethno- racial questions in public schools and universities in Recife. One of the members is poet and history Master’s student Bell Puã, who grew up in an upper middle class black family. It was in the daily contradictions, in suffering racial discrimination from the stores she visited to the elevators she rode, that she discovered politics.

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Reciclação (Reciclaction) has existed since 2013 and works to construct a sustainable cycle in the Morro dos Prazeres, in Santa Tereza. The project collects recyclable materials from residents, sells them and reinvests the money in environmental education.

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Created by residents and members of social movements in Maré, a favela complex in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, the Maré Museum creates actions to register, preserve and inform visitors about the history of the communities that resist there.

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Movimentos emerges in 2016, in the North Zone of Rio. Today, it brings together youth from different peripheries across the country who are interested in discussing drug policy from the perspective of those who live the “war on drugs” most intensely.

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Papo Reto Collective works in the Alemão Complex and in other Rio de Janeiro favelas with organizing, communication and mobilization to resist state violence and guarantee rights.

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Lucia Cabral was born in the countryside of Paraíba in 1967 and was still born to Rio de Janeiro, at the age of six months. In search of a better life, her parents settled in the Complexo do Alemão, where she lived a happy childhood. Lucia’s father dreamed of seeing her as a teacher, while herself wanted to have a school. At age 12, she was already writing letters from Northeasterners to her relatives in the homeland and began to alphabetize some of them. In 1986, he turned his home into a little school and did not stop. Since then, she has worked in different projects as an articulator, educator, coordinator, health promoter … Until in 2008, she started the Educap (Democracy Space of Living Together Learning and Prevention) with other young people in the health area in a room of his own house. The following year, a construction site located in the Field of the sergeant became the new address of the NGO. With a series of partnerships with private companies and public power, today Educap is one of the main organizations that work to guarantee human rights in Complexo do Alemão. And Lucia attributes this to the possibility of having many people participating in the organization’s processes.

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O CDD na Web é um portal de comunicação comunitária da Cidade de Deus, zona Oeste do Rio de Janeiro, e faz política ao falar de políticas públicas para os moradores com objetivo de mudar essa realidade.

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Veruska Delfino lived in the interior of Maranhão until the age of 9, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro. In the South Zone of the city, she began to do theater in an NGO and learned with her teacher Marcus Faustini to link art with social work in the territories. Today, at the age of 29, she works for Rede Redes Para Juventude – an organization created by Faustini in 2011 to empower young people from favelas to turn ideas into intervention projects. “If we do not put these people to be active in this debate, the damage of a generation that we will have soon will be huge” explains Veruska. However, with setbacks happening at ever-increasing speed, the time has come to intensify this action. This is how last year the “Todo Jovem é Rio”, in which 13 young people from different communities in the city, with different profiles and who are already involved in the militancy, receive training in the right to the city, urban mobility, mobilization among others in order to take these debates to those outside the “bubble”. Each young mobilizes four other hosts in his community-be they church, prom, pre-college entrance-and they gather another crowd in their own homes. “Why is it inside the house? Because we want to bring this young closer to the political narrative and not to that old photograph of the politicians that we have” explains Veruska.

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End of the military dictatorship, Rio de Janeiro. At Pedro II College, André Fernandes and his colleagues recreated the student body. This moment marks the political activity of the adolescent, who afterwards joined the Navy as a Marine, left the military career to act in the communities as a missionary of his evangelical church and, in direct work with the press, perceived the demand and the potential of communication for the emancipation of favelas. The dream came to fruition on January 8, 2001, when André and others posted the Favelas News Agency (ANF) website, which today is an organization and also has a printed newspaper with a circulation of 50,000 copies. The ANF aims to stimulate the integration and exchange of information between favelas and improve the quality of life of the population – and this also includes the choice of representatives in the institutional framework. “Political innovation is the conscientization of all the poorest people in whom they must vote,” he points out.

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Samy Brasil already made a social protest with the band Black Music. And in 2013, when they started to do Black Bom, in Pedra do Sal, the port region of Rio, they learned of Cais do Valongo – a veritable cemetery where the bodies of enslaved Africans who did not survive the crossing of the Atlantic were thrown on arrival in more movement of the slave trade. He also met black resistance heroes, became involved in movements and began to participate in seminars … As a result, the ball became the Black Bom Institute, which occupies a space in Lapa and aims to develop black and peripheral enterprises of the state capital.

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Think of that person who drags half a world behind her, straight from here and there and that makes the stop happen. Thought? In Santa Marta, a favela located in Botafogo (in the rich southern area of ​​Rio de Janeiro), Sheila Souza is one of the people who have this profile. From childhood poor in financial resources but rich in experiences, she works to create possibilities for change where she lives and from what this environment has to offer solutions, aware that the State as it is today will not deliver what we want for free. “What we need is to articulate to empower other ‘Marielles’,” she says, referring to Marielle Franco, a city councilwoman from Rio de Janeiro executed with her driver Anderson Gomes in March 2018. “They can be women, men, but have that strength of real representativeness “. Training tourist, she has accumulated experience since 1992 with community tourism in the favela – what she calls “basic actions”. And since 2010, Brazilidade is a formal social business that promotes connections to help communicate favela culture, its natural, historical and social representations, reducing the invisible barriers between hills and asphalt.

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Coletivo Bonobando brings together artists from various parts of the city of Rio de Janeiro with interventions in the streets, alleys, alleys and also in the conventional theaters. His artistic productions portray his trajectories and relationship with the city, making art and politics walk side by side.

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Rede Umunna is made up of black women who research and promote the presence of black women in political institutions. Umunna’s work involves political training for black women, positioning issues in the public agenda and data-centered research. In this electoral year, Umunna organized the campaign #BlackWomenDecide with the objective of qualifying the debate on the under- representation of black women in Brazilian politics.

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Marcelo Rocha is 20 years old and already understands the value of citizen participation as a tool for real transformation of society. He was part of the secondary school movement, and also integrated movements in favor of education and fighting for the rights of black people.

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Black Initiative for New Drug Policies (INNDP) discusses alternatives for drug policy, taking into consideration the fact that the “war on drugs” promotes genocide and mass incarceration of the black population. They work mainly in the peripheries of São Paulo city.

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The collective Nós, Mulheres da Periferia (We, Women from the Periphery) addresses questions of daily life of the women who live in the peripheries of São Paulo.

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Vinicius de Morais thinks politics from permaculture, a concept that values ​​the patterns and characteristics of natural ecosystems applied to agriculture and the use of resources – something truly sustainable. And the way to that understanding is long. Vinicius remembers his grandmother, born in an indigenous tribe in Itaim Paulista (east side of São Paulo), midwife and benzedeira, who always brought the traditional knowledge to solve day to day issues. Among children, weddings, comings and goings to Ribeirão Preto, Vinicius also drew from memory the teachings of the matriarch. In the agribusiness capital, he began to question the model of food production and how indigenous peoples point to another, more harmonious path. It was in the interior that he met the Landless Movement (MST) and initiatives such as agroforestry. He moved to Alto Paraíso de Goiás and, back to the east side of São Paulo, joined an environmental education project in a land provided by the Housing Development Company (CDHU), where he finally managed to extrapolate the contents to talk about permaculture, solidarity economy and development. The Point of Sustainable Social-Environmental Culture emerges from these paths. Today, it involves women from the community and generates income through the provision of various services. Vinicius also works in the Municipal Council for the Environment and works for the reopening of a community radio in Itaim Paulista – all within the principles of permaculture.

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The first time that Ronaldo Matos took action to transform his reality was when he understood that information has the power to help people change their lives. This happened first when he was a child, but hit home when Ronaldo was an adult and worked in the corporate sector. Concern pushed him to create Desenrola e Não Me Enrola, a communication collective in Jardim Ângela (SP) that portrays what is happening socially and culturally in peripheries of São Paulo. Beyond content production, the collective also organizes “You, Reporter from the Periphery” an education and communication project for youth and the “São Paulo Periphery Writers Congress” which highlights literature and authors from the periphery. Since 2017, it has managed the “M’Boi Mirim Center for Media and Popular Communication,” which is a community space that has a collaborative office, a multimedia photography and video studio, an auditorium for speeches and workshops and a newsroom for the portal. The collective does politics, specifically supporting people who are seeking information to act politically. “For me, the main characteristics of people who do politics today are openness to encounters, to understanding other narratives, other contexts, acquiring new knowledges,” Ronaldo says.

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What to do when the state does not fulfill its obligation to foster culture? In the case of the Instituto Pombas Urbanas, the way was to occupy this space. The institute was created in September of 2002 by the group of theater of the same name and that is the result of a project idealized by the peruvian actor Lino Rojas. The performance always happened in the East Zone, with Theater in Community, initially in São Miguel Paulista – an old quarter, and strongly marked by the northeastern migration. In the search for a space of its own, in 2004, the “Pombas Urbanas” found an abandoned shed in Tiradentes City, where a supermarket used to work. It is in this ruined space, without ceiling, that the group begins a work with the community for projects of artistic formation and of public. Revitalized, the “Centro Cultural Arte em Construção” became an autonomous space that houses events, shows and courses, as well as a community library with 10,000 titles. Managed by the community itself, the space also houses three groups that are the fruit of its occupation – Filhos da Dita Teatral Nucleus, Cia Teatral Aos Quatro Ventos and Teatro Palombar Theater Group – and receives more than 25,000 people a year. “Our political action is very much linked to making daily to give life. It is not something that came from an ideological place, an ideological formation is not, it is a practice, “explains Adriano Paes, 42, one of the articulators of space.

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Jardim Brazil, Extreme North of São Paulo, next to Serra da Cantareira: the middle of the Earth is here. Better yet, “Casa do meio do mundo” (House in the Middle of Earth), a collective space for cultural agents, communication professionals and researchers from peripheries interested in social transformation with a hyperlocal perspective. Ingrid Felix and Jesus dos Santos, members of the collective, understand what residents want. Activists from cultural movement of periphery, they assisted to write a law for cultural support on peripheries, based on the human development index in São Paulo ‘ghettos’; This law, passed in 2016, directs resources for these organizations in regions tending to receive less from the government. This street experience, in the struggle, feeds the ‘Casa no meio do mundo’. Over there, political leaders from comunity get training to continue on the front lines, disputing resources from the municipal budget. They work to strengthen local development with an emphasis on care and horizontality. “Beforehand, representatives far away from us spoke for us. Now we are speaking for ourselves” Jesus notes.

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Since 2012, Liga do Funk (Funk League) has used the music genre most often heard by the youth from favelas as a political tool and social inclusion. In addition to forming new MCs, DJs, dancers and producers, the organization frequently promotes debates on Hip Hop, women’s rights and the LGBT population, on drugs regularization among many others.

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In order to keep alive the culture of ‘samba’, the most popular brazilian expression, the Samba Autêntico Cultural Institute works for research, cultivate and spread the samba culture of São Paulo, showing its roots for everyone and mostly to experience the political function of this musical genre.

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