After June, Peace Will Take Over

After June, peace will take over is the ironic title of the tour de force that ends our journey and addresses the relationship between pacification and insurgence. As he dismantles the clichés propagated by the right and the left—a street "riot” promoted by vandals that should be fumigated by security forces, or the childish leftism of a disorganized youth that has no direction and, consequently, will bring no results—, Arantes searches the recent literature on urban popular classes in Brazil and publications written by those who promoted the events to find ideas that allow building hypotheses about the genealogy of June 2013. The result is the most original interpretation of those events ever written so far. If we add the following (mostly indigestible) ingredients to the Brazilian pressure cooker: the Favela Pacification Program in Rio de Janeiro and its UPPs (Pacifying Police Units), which was actually a war strategy; the police violence against residents of urban outskirts; the forced removal required by mega-events; the public policies that, by promoting entrepreneurship among poor people, focus their energy on a governable activity while creating a residual group full of demands about to explode; the city fights put up by a generation of “insurgent citizens” demanding the democratization of urban land; the “agony of disposable labor, showing that the contemporary, religious-like capitalism has become a daunting and endless ‘ritual of suffering’”; the popular uprisings for free public transport; the syndrome of powerless civic participation; etc.—all topics have been analyzed by Arantes—, we may say that this set of phenomena creates a system and possibly explains the “new profanatory insurgence” that flooded the streets in June. (…) Facing this state of affairs and taking a step forward is the task of the new generation, who opened a door in June 2013.

(Excerpt from the introductory note written by Isabel Loureiro)

The book includes a link to the open class Tarifa zero e mobilização popular (Free public transport and popular mobilization) held on June 27, 2013, in the heat of the events, at the invitation of the Free Fare Movement (Movimento Passe Livre – MPL), in front of the São Paulo City Hall. A summarized transcription of that class is also included in the e-book. 

Keywords: June 2013, demonstrations, insurgence, uprising, pacification, youth, popular classes, workers, cities, labor, social suffering, transports, MPL, anti-capitalism, neoliberalism, democracy, social control, refusal, utopia, present time.