A week of student-led rallies to energize President Lula da Silva’s base and motivate voters who abstained from voting in the first round of national elections on Oct. 4 (33 million people), reached a new stage of mobilization Sunday, Oct. 11, in a giant rally on São Paulo’s iconic Avenida Paulista. The rally was called by major left-wing student associations of the region, and featured a surprise speech from Lula himself (he had not been listed as a speaker going into the event). So many people jammed the avenue that the nearest subway station had to be shut down.
Press reports consistently stressed that the crowd was largely young, unlike the closing rallies of Lula’s campaign going into the first round set-back, where Lula came in behind Flávio Bolsonaro, son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro. The younger Bolsonaro has pledged to savagely cut the budget, including education and science, join Washington’s “Shield of the Americas” surrender of sovereignty to U.S. military involvement throughout the continent under the pretext of “cracking down on crime gangs,” hand Washington control of Brazil’s reserves of rare earths and other critical minerals—the second largest in the world, after China’s—and take Brazil out of the BRICS.
UOL news service headlined its coverage of the event: “Young people lead pro-Lula rally in São Paulo and occupy seven blocks on Paulista Avenue.” Numerous press reports highlighted the participation of students, artists, fan communities, and even soccer clubs, and suggested that the rally’s distinctive feature was the breadth of its mobilizing networks, not simply the presence of established politicians.
Addressing the huge crowd, Lula went hard after Bolsonaro’s proposed spending cuts, saying Flávio’s measures would fall on the poorest. “His scissors would possibly be the same as [Argentine President Javier] Milei’s scissors, that is, to cut the rights of poor people, to cut retirees’ rights, to cut the rights of those who need to earn a little more, and to take the people back to the situation of misery in this country. We do not allow this to happen again in Brazil in any way.”
He promoted the creation of a Ministry of Public Security, to upgrade crime-fighting capacities in the country, without surrendering sovereignty. And he put a spotlight on a vote coming up in the Brazilian Senate this Wednesday, to finally establish a 5-day work week (Brazil’s current labor legislation authorizes a 6-day work week). This is a signature initiative of his Administration, widely popular, and the expected Bolsonaro effort to delay or defeat the measure could hurt him.
Lula lost the first round of voting 47% to 45% (a roughly 2 million vote difference), and since then three right-wing minor candidates have thrown their support to Bolsonaro, adding several millions to Bolsonaro’s presumed vote in the second round. It remains to be seen how much the street mobilization for Lula can trigger a broader shift of votes and cut into the rate of abstentions, with only two weeks left in the campaign. Bolsonaro forces control the Supreme Electoral Court, and command a formidable social media network.
