By Casey G

If you’re in the mood for pizza, there’s no better place to go than Sicily’s Pizza in Southwest Detroit. This is where MDDSA comrades met on December 8th for a Red Square co-presented with the Political Education and International Solidarity working groups. Peter B. of Brazil’s Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and Liberty Party, abbreviated to PSOL) was visiting Detroit and met with us over cheese and pepperoni pizzas to discuss his experiences living and working in Brazil, and answer questions from comrades at MDDSA.

Peter has been an organizer since 2009, starting in Brazil’s student and youth movement. He then moved into electoral, where he was chief of staff for PSOL Congresswoman Sâmia de Souza Bomfim. He is currently living in the United States while reasearching with an American university.

Peter discussed the difference in American and Brazilian party systems. As opposed to our American reality of two parties struggling to hold power on one side of the binary or the other, Brazil has 30 recognized political parties with more than 20 parties holding seats in Congress. New parties are more common in Brazil than in the US, with PSOL forming in 2004 after a split from the Workers Party after President Lula’s proposed pension reform raised the retirement age. PSOL currently holds 12 of the 513 seats in Brazil’s Congress.

Peter gave us a personal anecdote of his experience witnessing the power of the general strike. While he was a student in Sao Paolo in 2017, he witnessed the ripple effects of a general strike through the city. While it affected plenty of sectors, his example was the subway union: the mode of transportation that millions of residents rely on (this year’s strike affected an estimated 3.3 million residents) was unavailable and attention drawn to the needs of those whose undervalued work maintains the system underlying the movement of thousands of citizens daily.

Peter laid out his three guiding principles for a socialist elected. As seen with Lula of the Worker’s Party and then as PSOL gained seats in Congress, the election of a socialist does not miraculously transform the system they operate within. Peter offers foundations to take into these new circumstances.

First, to mobilize society. Success is not achieved in the act of taking office — success is improvements in the material conditions of the working class. These include goals such as Mamdani’s freezing rents, free buses, and universal childcare. [CG1] An elected is not just a representative with a megaphone; true embodiment of the position is organizing and mobilizing constituents to fight for themselves.

Second, to speak the truth of and for the working class. Honesty is its own labyrinth in politics, but as an elected navigates the system, they must be guided by honesty towards their constituents as they face obstacles and compromise.

And last, expanding the horizons. Once we reach goals that have been set, we expand the field and stretch to farther goals. Particularly given DSA’s recent bout of electoral wins (Detroit’s own Denzel McCampbell, and of course, Zohran Mamdami in New York City), it’s time to start thinking about what happens when the North star we’ve been following turns from a spot on the horizon to the ground under our feet. What does socialist governance look like in practice?

We are still operating within a capitalist system and there’s an important balance to strike for American socialists. These electoral wins are indeed achievements to be celebrated; we have not achieved a miraculous change to existing systems and our electeds are going to have rough waters to steer in.

It’s also perpetually invigorating to see people talk about, as material reality, the things we fight for now in the United States. When we’re constantly told how providing medical care to every person is unrealistic, it’s helpful to be reminded that is simply not true. Brazil has a Healthcare for All system. They also removed private money from elections ten years ago. These are not unreasonable pipe dreams; they’re concrete reality elsewhere and worth fighting for here, too. A huge thanks to Peter B. for taking time to discuss with us his experiences in Brazil.