Rousseff urges activists to resist impeachment

With less than 48 hours left until her impeachment trial begins in Senate on Thursday (Aug. 24), Brazil's suspended President Dilma Rousseff was at a Meeting for Rights and Against the Coup on Tuesday (23) at Casa de Portugal in downtown São Paulo. Her message was, “Let's all resist together. I begin with this word, which is a strong fighting word: we will resist.”

The president extolled how social movements, progressive political parties, society, artists, and women rallied together in a big resistance front. “A movement that has created a front in the purest sense of democracy. This was perhaps our biggest victory,” Rousseff said.

She went on, “One of the things we have learned from all these events is, we can't take democracy for granted. Democracy is a hard-won achievement and we should always be careful to protect what we've gained.”

Rousseff said another achievement of these groups was recognizing that what was happening was a coup. “Why is it a coup? Because it's the use of an instrument that's indeed in the Constitution—impeachment—but it's unfounded because there have been no impeachable offenses.”

“You can be sure that this is a process we are all perfectly able to take on and overcome. But we must rally to it. I have been a fighter all my life, I have fought torture, I have fought cancer, and I will fight all injustice,” the suspended president concluded.

The meeting was organized by the movements Frente Brasil Popular and Frente Povo Sem Medo and attended by Workers' Party (PT) politicians and activists, including São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad, Workers' Party Chairman Rui Falcão, and former Senator Eduardo Suplicy.

Translated by Mayra Borges