The Church and the world are expecting a lot from us. I start with this statement because we are looking at the effort and commitment of our Pope Francis in doing that the great community of Jesus Project’s followers joins around him, understands the dimension of this proposal that it goes far beyond from those who confess our creed, that reaches to all workers around the world and in every corner of planet, this our House, threatened dangerously today by the disease of consumerism, the greed, negationism, intolerance, rotten fruits of selfishness, this evil that was so struggled by the one who, by Love, gave his life by all us.
These times living are really strange, saddened by the number of deaths resulting from a pandemic, but also by the precariousness in which millions of victims of unemployment live, aggravated by the disease, but also by the mechanisms of wealth concentration of the powerful. We are saddened deeply to see to millions starving to death, despite all the technological advances in food production, but even more saddened by the waste. How worrying it is to see whole families moving aimless, hopeless, frightened by ethnic, religious and political conflicts, looking for a place where they can have peace; families barred by barbed wire, electrified fences, police with water jets and dogs that scare, humiliate and kill. This horrible scene we are witnessed, designed by a death project and produced by a system that nothing has to offer to humanity, is also wounded of death, as Mother Earth, it is dying; but the Mother will recover, due to the wounds, but the perverse system will pass, as others have done.
We see signs of change all over the world. The involvement of young people in social and environmental causes is even more greater, and the young Swedish Greta Thunberg is a proof of it. Women, historical victims of diverse types of violence, are winning little by little victories through different world movements and once more, a young girl, the Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize 2014, symbolises this victory and this hope and seems to say all women, we are together!
The struggle against racism that started in ancient times, which claimed the lives of Malcom X, Martin Luther King and so others, has spread and strengthened. The murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white American policeman, has outraged the whole world. It even provoked a review of the history, the monuments of former slaveholders were torn out in several places of America and Europe.
In the political space, after a short period of extreme right advance, we perceive that the social democrats, socialists and leftists in all the world search a recomposition. The victory of Chilean people in the streets, since 2019, the resumption of MAS - Movement to Socialism, from Bolivia, in 2020 elections. And with some ideological differences, Trump’s defeat against the democrat Joe Biden. In Brazil, Lula Libre movement, the victories of the ex-president before Brazilian courts and the rearticulation of progressives, all these facts appoint out that something new is appearing on the horizon.
Finally, at this moment when we have the privilege, as leaders and representatives of a movement which was born in the heart of working class, a movement present in four continents, we cannot stay out of this historical moment, we will not be only spectators. The barriers exist and there are many, but the belief that the world we dream and it is possible to materialise hand in hand with the working class, obliges us to overcome all the obstacles and to participate actively and committedly in the rebuilding.
Written by Marcelino de Almeida - MCW Brazil WMCW Councillor - South America
