“Come to the Street!”: Urban Protest, Brazil 2013

W hen street demonstrations overtook Brazilian cities in June, critics from Left to Right were quick to assert what they were not: they were not organized by recognizable, tried-and-true forms of social protest (social movements, political parties, labor unions, churches, professional associations, human rights groups, NGOs); they were leaderless; they lacked political articulation; they had no consolidated agenda; they refused the Press; they disdained elected politicians and rejected a decade of ruling Workers' Party (PT) megapublicity about Brazilian successes.In short, they were splintered, anarchic, unrepresentative, unverifiable, ungrateful, and apolitical.Yet, by mid-June, more than a million people were participating in street demonstrations, clearly mobilized by something rather than nothing.Their sustained force rendered the regularlyconsulted media pundits, politicians, and political scientists, usually so confident, shocked if not clueless.Every day and night massive numbers of citizens in all of Brazil's major cities and many smaller ones accepted the riotous invitation "Vem pra rua!" (Come to the street!) that was distributed through social media, held high on cardboard posters, and stamped on t-shirts (Figure 1).Often emblazoned on a clenched fist, the invitation became a hortatory "take the street" that individuals felt compelled to extend and multitudes to heed.Given this massive response, the call for insurgence, though suddenly answered, could only have developed out of a deep popular sense of what and how to protest.