Human life on the planet, when internationally debated, allows us to see the symbolic value of each event. Since the last killing in Baltimore, US, Baltimore was compared in proportion to any slum in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we see the police as true agents of explosive violence.
When the world of journalism converges with the selection of these facts lined up with political corruption, we see how the party system is poor, as poverty feeds this vicious cycle.
The modern diaspora, south of Europe demonstrates how the global exclusion can be understood by the same signs of economic and cultural barbarism carried out by the “stroke of the pen” of the political classes within their respective countries.
The poet Marcelo Yuka, knowledgeable of suburban and peripheral life of Rio de Janeiro, wrote the lyrics for ‘Todo Camburão tem um pouco de Navio Negreiro’ (All Bushwacker has a bit of Slave Ship) in the mid-1990s, Yuka became known in the Brazilian music scene as an expressive artist through his use of
forceful speech. By doing this, Yuka was able to synthesize the marginalization of Black youth in Brazil, ultimately making him a trusted figure, whilst the mainstream media addressed the same issue with indifference and thus became mistrusted.
It is also important to note that Yuka, in his new album, will have songs under a thick African syncretic cultural broth. That is, on the one hand; Black people are oppressed, but their resistance is manifested through cultural movement.
In Brazil, we have the classic book ‘O NEGRO REVOLTADO’ ( The Nigger Revolted) by Abdias do Nascimento, a book that has been used as a stimulus for creative minds by the underprivileged masses.
One of these minds helped to create a voice for change through the activities of the ‘TEATRO EXPERIMENTAL DO NEGRO’ (Black Experimental Theater), which was quickly supported by the National Union of Students (UNE), then congresses and seminars. TEATRO EXPERIMENTAL DO NEGRO caused a large scale revisionism in social movements; particularly how Black people were viewed on the political front. Today, we see how diversity and diverse materials form the dialectics of a democratic world order. But today’s world is not made up of moral values. Instead, today’s commercial status is what dictates the rules of the consumer market and justice.
In this sense, the Internet has become established as an essential tool in the dissemination of movements and for revealing what happens in the world.
Given the technological advances, it is now possible for people to disseminate ideologies because the Internet has shown a viewpoint which contradicts the wildly held thought that today is the ‘end of History’.
Instead, the Internet and in particular; social networks, demonstrates that history is just beginning, and everyone can become authors; enforcing freedom of expression and originality. This is possible because social networks are transparent, allowing young people to grow up listening to the demands for respecting religions, both in belief and creed, sexual orientations and philosophies of different cultures, all of which are aspects which make humanity colourful.
Until everyone respects people for who they are, barbarism is imposed as a civilizing element. Cities are being segregated, both ethnically and financially; with the working class neighborhoods having few cultural facilities but a heavy police presence as a form of social control.
However, the discourse of this hatred in mass culture, does not seduce young, independent producers and instead, the narratives complement each other in a uniform block.
8º Encontro de Cinema Negro Zózimo Bulbul (The 8th Meeting of Black Cinema Brazil, Africa and the Caribbean) held in Rio de Janeiro is an example of how this social control does not always work. During this meeting, there was a remake of the classic film; Cinco Vezes Favela (1962) which was directed by young film makers who grew up in the slums.
In Brazil the notorious political figure; Tarso Genro, who is affiliated to the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party), has long been expressing the view that the state of Brazil is what happens when the traditional party politics is depleted. Instead, he argues that the pressure for change should come from the outside, from the people and that the streets and social networks make up a broad dialogue channel within our civil society.
And this is true. We know that the recent mass demonstrations have been promoted over the internet which has been recognised by unions who have in turn, promoted these mass demonstrations too. This social recognition means that students from all over the world could apply pressure to the same causes. From Chile, with the ‘indignados’ in Spain, with the Occupy USA, Greece, France, Brazil; people all over the world could protest about the same thing and hope to change the world.
And the protests prove this. For some, they can see the world change without leaving their homes, like Yuka’s TV show shows us various issuesof public interest in his TV show. Ultimately, it shows us all one thing; that this political struggle “from below” shall take effect.
And Yuka is right. The signs are evident and you can see this as people occupy various spaces (like Occupy Wall Street) and are promoting exchange, circulating knowledge freely.
In the end, the protests and their achievements are known as their social rights are recognised and a direct line of communication is opened up with the government, creating popular empowerment.
This recognition of citizen consciousness then manifests in monitoring and operation of government bodies, like cultural ministries, departments, institutions and other forms of financing. If the need for professionalization and production is understood as an individual existence, then the very concept of the economy that unifies the world also changes, allowing the concept of a ‘creative economy’ to be something more than a hypothetical, rhetorical question because creativity has also begun to change how contemporary capitalism operates today, so we can only hope for more positive changes to how creativity can transform capitalism in a new world.
Hope, solidarity and love are words understood by any gesture, to make It depends on the strength of each individual and their respective dialectic exercises. Today anyone can challenge the world looking out the window, even as we celebrate an event like the New Year because a time zone is not an effective demonstration of time and space in movement?