Public event: Brazil’s crisis – what does it mean for the global left?

Brazilian politics is in crisis. Dilma Rousseff, the current President of Brazil, has been suspended as she undergoes impeachment for manipulating the government budget. Yet with many of her opponents accused of far more serious crimes and with evidence of US involvement, accusations of a coup abound. The aim of the coup: to block an official investigation into corruption and to unravel the economic and social progress made under the party to which Rousseff belongs, the Workers’ Party (PT). But will the right-wingers pull off the coup? Grassroots opposition to an illegitimate new government is growing. And what of the left? Should it seek yet again to reform the PT which has lost the support of social movements by failing to press ahead with radical reforms? Or should it look for a new way forward?

Join Red Pepper magazine, the Latin American Bureau, and Practical Action Publishing on Monday, June 20 for an evening of discussion on the dynamics of the political crisis in Brazil and what it means for the future of the left there and across the globe.

Chair

Hilary Wainwright is a founding editor of Red Pepper magazine and a fellow of the Transnational Institute. She has authored numerous books on democracy and has been writing about the PT and its changing relations with social movements for over three decades.

Speakers

Jan Rocha is a freelance journalist and writer who lives in Brazil. She was the Brazil correspondent for the BBC and the Guardian and has written several books, including Brazil Inside Out (co-authored with Francis McDonagh), a new edition of which, updated for the Olympics, will be launched at this meeting. 

Sue Branford reported from Brazil for over a decade for the Financial Times and the Economist. She has written extensively on Brazil and Latin America, including a recent report on the origins of the current crisis in the PT. Read Sue’s latest article on Brazil, Recolonising a continent, here.

David Lehmann has been studying Brazil since the mid-1980s. He is the author of Democracy and development in Latin America: economics, politics and religion in the postwar period, and Struggle for the Spirit: popular culture and religious transformation in Brazil and Latin America. In recent years he has followed the campaigns of Brazil’s movimento negro (black movement) against racial discrimination.

Pedro Mendes Loureiro is a researcher of the ‘Pink Tide’ governments in Latin America, focusing on their impact on inequality and the causes of their rise and fall. He is an Economics PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London.

Brazil Inside Out

Copies of Brazil Inside Out, a look at the people, politics and culture of Brazil, will be available to purchase at the event. Each attendee will also recieve a free copy of the latest issue of Red Pepper, which includes a special feature by Sue Branford on the political crisis in Brazil, and content on Nuit Debout, the collapse of the extractivist model in South America, the EU-Turkey refugee deal, and much more.

We will be accepting a suggested donation of £3 on the night to help cover the cost of venue hire. The Marchmont Street Community Centre is fully accessible and meets requirements for people with disabilities.

WHEN: Monday, 20 June 2016 from 18:30 to 20:30 (BST)

WHERE: Marchmont Street Community Centre – 62 Marchmont Street, London, WC1N 1AB

There are limited places available so please reserve your ticket here.