Parada is today the only progressive movement that mobilizes and takes crowds of Brazilians to the streets. Perhaps because it is a unique mix of festive joy with a good-humored affirmation of identity and combative engagement for rights.
Other more traditional left-wing movements — for urban improvements; for access to housing and healthcare; against racial or gender discrimination; or for labor rights, a field of union activity—they are certainly still there. For more than a decade, however, they have been fighting for the streets and squares with the extreme right — almost always at a disadvantage. The same can be said of , whose activism was largely confused with union activists and popular organizations. And even more so from the party groups that orbit around the party of .
There will be good explanations for the difficulty that the party and its movements encounter in mobilizing crowds around less or more ambitious agendas. Among them, the proximity to the federal government occupied by the coalition headed by the PT, allowing social leaders and party activists to be sucked into the public machine.
The truth is that since Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018, the progressive extra-parliamentary reaction to threats to democracy and fundamental rights has not taken place primarily on the streets. The left adopted judicialization as their main strategy.
Between 2019 and 2022, using instruments provided for in the Constitution —in particular the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) and the Allegation of Noncompliance with Fundamental Precepts (ADPF)—, they sought to block the most reactionary initiatives of the Executive or Legislative in the Federal Supreme Court.
During that period, around 2,000 ADIs and 600 ADPFs were filed, which dealt with measures related to the Covid 19 epidemic; environment and environmental inspection; protection of indigenous peoples during the outbreak; police operations in favelas; restriction of freedom of expression; decrees on the use of firearms.
Although not the only ones, left-wing parties were the main drivers of judicialization. Provoked by social movements and non-governmental organizations, they became the biggest litigants, standing out for the frequency of their appeals to the Supreme Court: by order, , Rede, , PT, and . Not being authorized by law to use those instruments, NGOs often participated in the actions, contributing technical opinions.
For progressive forces, judicialization is a defensive strategy with advantages and limitations: they can leave organization and social mobilization in defense of their causes in the background. And they benefit from the reduction in power asymmetry when the dispute takes place in the field of legal interpretation.
On the other hand, the appeal to the Supreme Court, in addition to dangerously increasing the power of its 11 magistrates, ends up limiting the agenda of the left. This is reduced to the battle for the program written in the Charter — eliminating the need for a debate of ideas. Especially new ideas for problems absent from the horizon of the constituents of 1988. And if there is anything missing in this country, it is problems.
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