Brazilians Protest High Cost of Hosting World Cup | Hacker News Reader

Brazilians Protest High Cost of Hosting World Cup

nytimes.com

4 pointshudell3 comments

Please upvote and raise awareness. The biggest media outlets in the country are manipulating the purpose behind the protests. A respected critic went on air during prime time to dismiss the importance of the protests as a movement of ignorant middle-class kids who only want to vandalize, while the military police is on the street with an order to stop the protests at all costs!

Thing is, I still don't get what these protests are about, or who are they aimed to. To me, they all look so random.

It's seems to me that it's just a bunch of people that think that the situation is bad, but don't what is wrong, or whose fault it is or what needs to be done ir order to get things fixed.

What are they aiming with this? What would make the protest end? A price-drop on bus fares? The cancelation of the world cup?

I think they want someone, somewhere, to notice this and magically fix everything.

The protests started in São Paulo because of the raise in the bus fares ("measly" R$ 0,20). This in itself is not a big issue, but the people were already fed up of mismanagement in the government. They claim there's no money for public transport but there's money for private transport (tollways, 0 taxes for cars), shiny stadiums for FIFA, astronomical salaries for the legislative...

The protests gathered enough people, and faced fierce, disproportional violence by the police. It became clear that, with the Brazil in the spotlight (Confederation Cup starting this week), the government didn't wanted people on the street. The situation escalated, and more people started protesting the following days in all major cities.

Now they are not protesting for anything in particular anymore, the protests are to show the insatisfaction of the population and how any protest gets suppressed with violence by the police. The São Paulo governor even applauded the work of the police.

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