January 30
This Sunday was anything but a typical day. One week ago, at daybreak, in Pinheirinho, we saw the New Year greetings from the Sao Paulo state government and the Police state that governs us. 2012 has barely begun and it has already received a wave of political militancy that is much more than the mere indignation of Facebook, marches, commiserations and an ephemeral revolt.
Not even one month has passed and yet we continue to fulfill the silly tradition of wishing each other, doped with blindness and morphine, a happy and prosperous new year, as if a longed for happiness, the full happiness, needed the poor representation of plastic shopping and hidden friends gathered for evening soirees in condominiums.
How many Pinheirinhos will be necessary in order to breakout of the Truman show and realise that life is neither pretty nor beautiful and much less happy?
There is much that we need to do politically.
The hunger strike commenced yesterday night. Where is it located? In Jardim Botânico in front of the Rede Globo (Brazilian TV and Newspaper Empire) network buildings. The reason is simple: for full media coverage that considers, as criminal, the gravity of the events in Pinheirinho.
So far there is nothing new here. We know what our media represents and who it serves. But the new time, this time asks for something new from us, a new media with new rights and a new journalism. Do it yourself become the new media.
The name of our militant is Pedro Rios Leão – “Caboclo Menino” for those who are closest to Occupy Rio movement. Last Monday Pedro packed his rucksack and left for São José dos Campos (in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo). He lived through and chronicled the massacre and the extent of the barbarism that pursued.
If all of us are Pinheirinho, Pedro is also Pinheirinho. He has handcuffed himself in front of the Rede Globo building in an expression of an autonomous and radical attitude – that some will judge as inconsequential – bringing the Political and the necessary strength and resistance closer to us and to his own body – he is putting his own body on the line.
“For me, I don’t care what will happen. What matters is what is happening now.”
We are with him.
Pedro doesn’t need our pity, preoccupation and worry or a pat on the back much less our incredulity or you turning your nose. He has with himself everything that he needs, in the precariousness of what we are.
Water, books, a thin mattress, paint, posters as well as a Flamengo shirt and an unshaved beard accompany his anger, hatred and his madness! Because, those that are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are in fact those that actually do.
Never forget Pinheirinho.
If the last century has a lesson to teach us, more than just being a moral palace and memorial of everything that was utopia or barbarism, then it is that the tributes and homage, stone monuments, the museums, ephemeris, cenotaphs and the praise to dead are not for us to remember but rather for us to forget.
Pedro, today, with his body that is torn and worn, has become a piece of graffiti on the walls of Rede Globo. A dissonant street corner and a tear in a glass window, the whip and scourge on a canvass by Van Gogh for a dirty aesthetic or the debauchery of the prose of Rimbaud towards a new poetic. A voice that says to whomever passes here that you don’t see me. But I am right here.
Never forget. Never forget Pinheirinho.
— Original in Portuguese
http://url.moosaico.com/30069 — Canal de vídeos do Pedro
http://www.youtube.com/user/pedroriosleao1?feature=watch — Justiça não é pacificação, João Telésforo
http://brasiledesenvolvimento.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/justica-nao-e-pac/ — Mil Pinheirinhos contra a comiseração desgraçada, Bruno Cava
http://www.quadradodosloucos.com.br/2542/mil-pinheirinhos-contra-a-comis/ — Dez mentiras que Cercam o Pinheirinho, Hugo Albuquerque
http://descurvo.blogspot.com/2012/01/dez-mentiras-que-cercam-o-pinheirin — O massacre de Pinheirinho e o Futuro da luta, Idelber Avelar
http://revistaforum.com.br/idelberavelar/2012/01/27/o-massacre-de-pinhei/