May 1st, Day of Struggle for #FreeLula

On May 1st, many countries around the world celebrate International Workers’ Day, or May Day, remembering our martyrs, our achievements, and our daily struggle to preserve our rights. It is also a moment of defense of democracy and Freedom of Assembly.

In Brazil, the working class and the Brazilian people are going through a moment of great difficulty. The Bolsonaro administration implements the worst reforms against workers’ rights and curtails union freedom, intends to eliminate basic historical rights such as universal social security and the policy of real increase in minimum wages, threatens the rights of indigenous peoples, the quilombolas (people in rural settlements originally started by escaped slaves) and other vulnerable social groups, plans to privatize national assets such as the pre-salt oil and electrical utilities, among other concrete threats to our country’s sovereignty.

All this happens because our President Lula was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election, having been unjustly found guilty and imprisoned since April 7 2018, in a long political persecution process so that the sectors behind the coup d’état could return to power to implement these reforms against the Brazilian people.

Lula, a former union leader who became Brazil’s president and who was responsible for the largest social program in our history through Bolsa Família, real increases in the minimum wage, facilitating student admissions to universities, providing essential medication for free, among other benefits, and he became a martyr of the working class. During Workers’ Day celebrations we will defend his freedom and restoration of democracy in Brazil, besides celebrating our past achievements and the need for fighting in the present.

We call upon all comrades who will celebrate May Day abroad to also carry the flags for Free Lula and in defence of democracy in Brazil, as Lula, a political prisoner, is the “Workers’ President”.

Happy May Day!
Free Lula!