e violence
The 2012 version of the same Violence Map project pointed to falling homicide rates for white youths and rising homicide rates for black youths from 2002 to 2010. Mothers of black youths killed have been growing in visibility, particularly those who have lost their children to police violence. This week, Terezinha de Jesus and Ana Paula Oliveira, mothers who lost their sons to police violence in Alemão and Manguinhos respectively, are traveling around Europe with Amnesty International to speak about their losses and Brazil’s security crisis. Terezinha’s story has received some recent international media attention since police concluded the officers who killed her son in April were acting in “legitimate self-defense.”
Black women speak out
Violence against black women and their families will be a key issue in today’s nationwide Black Women’s March. Organizers are expecting thousands of protesters to take part in Brasília on behalf of the 54.9 million Brazilian women who identify as black or mixed-race. A call-to-action video explains women will march for equal salaries, for respect for the social role of black women, against racism, against violence, and for their well-being. In an article titled, “Why black women march,” Columnist Flávia Oliveira points out that in addition to high homicide rates, black women suffer more fatalities related to pregnancy complications and lower average salaries: 60% of white women’s average salary, 75% of black men’s, and 40% of white men’s.
The issues facing Brazil’s black women are intensified in the favelas. In an article titled, “The woman of the favela’s cry for help,” Complexo da Maré journalist Gizele Martins explains that the average woman in a favela lives “day to day,” because “it’s her house that has been removed in this marvelous city for more than 100 years, and her child who, for a century, has been assassinated due to the criminalization of poverty.” While their culture, identities, way of speaking and dressing, and even their role in childbearing are devalued—former governor Sergio Cabral once described favelas as “factories for producing criminals”—Gizele writes that women of the favela will continue “speaking, writing, shouting and demanding” their rights. For writer Juliana Borges, black feminism allows women to “love bravely,” to “subvert historical images and constructions,” and ultimately “destroy and transform the oppression” facing them.
Technology against harassment
When a 12-year-old female contestant on MasterChef Junior was the target of creepy tweets from men, journalist and feminist Juliana de Faria began tweeting about her experiences of harassment as a kid. The hashtag #MeuPrimeiroAssedio—“my first harassment”—went viral with over 90,000 tweets as tens of thousands of women shared their stories of harassment and assault as children. Some women shared experiences at ages as young as five, often in everyday spaces from the supermarket to the beach.
Another creative response to harassment came from 17-year-old student Catharia Doria. Doria created an app called Sai Pra Lá (Leave me Alone) which targets of harassment can use to record what they experienced (verbal comments, physical contact, whistling, etc.) and where it occurred. The app’s creator points out the lack of information on harassment until now: “Nobody ever really denounces harassment, it’s like it didn’t happen, so we can’t know how often it has occurred.” The result of her app’s data collection is a map of what harassment looks like, which should enable people to better combat the problem.
The app complements the Via Lilás project, which earlier this year installed interactive machines in 23 Rio train stations (including two Alemão cable car stations) to allow individuals to report sexual or domestic violence, assault, and harassment, among other gender-based crimes, facilitating data collection on incidents that otherwise often go unreported.
Also this month, women have taken to the streets in Rio, São Paulo and Brasília to protest a law proposed by Brazil’s Congressional president Edu