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Homeless Workers' Movement

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MTST poster for the Quilombo das Guerreiras Occupation.

The Homeless Workers Movement (Template:Lang-pt. MTST) is a social movement in Brazil. It originated from the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Template:Lang-en). Although the MTST can trace its first urban activism efforts to the occupation of Campinas in São Paulo during the 1997 National People’s March, this intervention was organized within the Landless Rural Worker’s Rural Movement (MST) structure. The first proper occupation as a new sociopolitical actor, distinct from the MST, took place in Guarulhos in 2002. It was named “Anita Garibaldi” in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wife and collaborator, considered to be a radical social reformer during her lifetime.[1]

Through direct confrontation and negotiation with the government, the MTST struggles to reduce Brazil's housing deficit by staging squatters' occupations in abandoned government buildings in Brazilian cities. Determining an exact number on the housing shortage in Brazil is a difficult task to achieve, but several estimates have been provided. In 2019, The Guardian reported 7.7 million [2] while Habitat for Humanity places the number between 6-8 million.[3] By resisting attempts by local governments to evict the poor and negotiating for their conversion into low-income housing, the MTST has challenged the neoliberal model.[4] [5] In fact, at the national level, previous governments have undermined affordable housing projects, including the emblematic Minha Casa, Minha Vida[6], but have failed at doing so due to MTST interventions.

According to the MTST, there are over 5 million housing units available in abandoned buildings in Brazil. São Paulo, for example, was short of housing units in the 500,000 - 700,000 range as of 2017.[7] As noted before, the MTST originally emerged as a faction within the MST and focuses on urban reform. Although fully autonomous, the organization has a strategic alliance with the MST and also works closely with other Brazilian urban social movements such as the União Nacional de Moradia Popular (Template:Lang-en) and the Centro dos Movimentos Populares (Template:Lang-en).

While the movement is politically heterogeneous, in 2017, MTST’s leader Guilherme Boulos ran as a presidential candidate representing the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), which signals an ideological cohesion with socialist principles and proposals. On one side, there are branches which resemble a Leninist political party in terms of structure and hierarchy, and on the other side, branches which are clearly committed to goals such as self-management, a characteristic within squatting communities.[8][9] Squatting is a key practice within MTST and, as such, does not solely have political repercussions, but ecological ones as well. In this regard, the occupation of abandoned buildings and homes, overlaps with decroissance or degrowth.[10] Over time, the MTST has developed a more nuanced and multi-dimensional counter-hegemonic stance on class struggle within the Brazilian government’s embrace of neoliberalism.[11] For example, the MTST’s State Collective of Ceará pivots on the concept of “dignified housing” to advocate for other related issues, such as infrastructure for social wellbeing, education, health care, and transportation.[12]

An occupation by MTST in Carapicuíba, São Paulo.

History

MTST was created within the MST in order to ensure representation of land reform advocacy in the urban sphere. According to the João Pinto foundation and the Ministry of Cities, there are six million Brazilian families that are living in undignified conditions. The MTST justifies its activities based on the 1988 constitution, which guarantees property and dignified social living conditions as social rights.[13]The MTST is a territorial movement of workers with common demands, indeed Brazilian cities are often segregated geographically between the wealthy area and the "periferia" which translates to periphery.[14] Urban planning and increasing rents has contributed to this segregation, forcing people in difficult economic circumstances to move to the outskirts of the town.[15]

In order to respond to the problem of having decent social living conditions, the objective of the MTST is to challenge capital and the State, which represents capitalist interests, to stop considering everything in monetary terms. For this, MTST's goal is the construction of popular power, against capital and its capitalist state[16]. At the beginning of its existence, MTST kept a low profile but with the economic crisis and over the years, the movement gained media attention. The situation is evolving and the turning point is in 2011, when the movement decide to stop advocating for the construction of informal housing, but to use the occupation of buildings (or squatting) as a symbolic act and as a political weapon to force the government to build formal housing through a housing program, My House My Life (Minha Casa, Minha Vida)[17].

Like their MST "elder", the MTST movement seeks to involve participants in reflection and decision-making through collective decisions, militant discipline and socialist values, transparency in relationships and empowerment of people[18][19]. In this way, the MTST calls for the reconquest of the city as a common good! Common urban planning is a common system in today's urban environment, mainly by occupying public or private space and transforming it into a common space[20]. Based on sharing, which is at the heart of the movement's activities, it is through sharing, that it is possible to create new forms of spatial and social relationships that shape new forms of "living together". By sharing space and beyond the space, these collective efforts show that different values and rules can shape today's cities in direct opposition to the dominant model of the individual and closed city[21][22].

On the other hand, the MTST has as its primary objective the right to housing, but not only. Indeed, the worker who does not have access to the right to live in dignity - the homeless - also does not have access to the related issues mentioned above (social welfare, education, health, etc.). This ties in with Stavrides' words and what he calls space-commoning, which is not simply the sharing of space, considered as a resource or an asset, but a set of inventive practices and imaginaries that explore the emancipatory potential of sharing[23].

See also

References

  1. Movimento de sem-teto reúne 40 mil famílias. Por Cleide Carvalho. O Globo, 18 de outubro de 2013.
  1. ^ "The Growth of Brazil's Homeless Workers' Movement". globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  2. ^ Scruggs, Gregory (2019-07-18). "Ministry of cities RIP: the sad story of Brazil's great urban experiment". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  3. ^ "Housing Poverty in Brazil: Slum Rehabilitation & Social Housing". Habitat for Humanity GB. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  4. ^ Albert, Victor (March 2018). "Justification work: The homeless worker's movement and the pragmatic sociology of dissent in Brazil's crisis". ResearchGate.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ Fierro, Alberto (2019-06-01). "Revolutionary Politics of Social Rights? An Ethnographic Account of the Homeless Workers' Movement in São Paulo". Millennium. 47 (3): 398–416. doi:10.1177/0305829819844313. ISSN 0305-8298.
  6. ^ "Land occupation as a solution to Brazil's housing crisis". Equal Times. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  7. ^ Sakamoto, Leonardo (2017-11-27). "The future of São Paulo sleeps in an improvised shack". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  8. ^ "Squatting houses, social centres, and workplaces: A workshop on self-managed alternatives". Antipode Online. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  9. ^ "[EN] Urban squatting, rural squatting and the ecological-economic perspective – SqEK". sqek.squat.net. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  10. ^ Cattaneo, Claudio (2010). "The experience of rurban squats in Collserola, Barcelona: What kind of degrowth?". Journal of Cleaner Production. 18(6): 581–589 – via ResearchGate.
  11. ^ Fierro, Alberto (2019-06-01). "Revolutionary Politics of Social Rights? An Ethnographic Account of the Homeless Workers' Movement in São Paulo". Millennium. 47 (3): 398–416. doi:10.1177/0305829819844313. ISSN 0305-8298.
  12. ^ "Homeless Workers Movement – State Collective of Ceará". Fundo Brasil. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  13. ^ "Entenda a luta do MTST | Sociologia Ciência & Vida". sociologia.uol.com.br (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2017-11-30.
  14. ^ Espaço intra-urbano no Brasil. São Paulo: Studio Nobel, Fapesp, Lincoln Institute, 2009.
  15. ^ Villaça, Flávio (April 2011). "São Paulo: segregação urbana e desigualdade". Estudos Avançados. 25 (71): 37–58. doi:10.1590/S0103-40142011000100004. ISSN 0103-4014.
  16. ^ "Quem Somos – MTST". mtst.org. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
  17. ^ "The homeless workers' movement and the pragmatic sociology of dissent in Brazil's crisis".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ "A organização do MTST – MTST". mtst.org. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
  19. ^ Fierro, Alberto (2020-04-17). "The MTST Politics of Social Rights: Counter-Conducts, Acts of Citizenship and a Radical Struggle Beyond Housing". International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. doi:10.1007/s10767-020-09356-6. ISSN 1573-3416.
  20. ^ Varvarousis, Angelos (2020-05-01). "The rhizomatic expansion of commoning through social movements". Ecological Economics. 171: 106596. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106596. ISSN 0921-8009.
  21. ^ Fierro, Alberto (2020-04-17). "The MTST Politics of Social Rights: Counter-Conducts, Acts of Citizenship and a Radical Struggle Beyond Housing". International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. doi:10.1007/s10767-020-09356-6. ISSN 1573-3416.
  22. ^ Stavrides, Stavros (2020-02). "Reclaiming the City as Commons. Learning from Latin American Housing Movements". www.ingentaconnect.com. Retrieved 2020-04-26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ Zuddas, Francesco (2018). "Stavros Stavrides 2016: Common Space: The City as Commons. London: Zed Books". International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 42 (6): 1153–1155. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12717. ISSN 1468-2427.
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