The Roda Viva episode was an interesting one, both publicly and for me, politically. I came out of Roda Viva with the feeling that, okay, I took on a very difficult TV program —  as are many of the programs I take part in — and I did well. Then, I noticed that people didn’t realize what I go through every day. It actually made people realize what I go through; and what other women go through, every day, who are on the left like me. But not only in politics, in any place of public visibility. It revealed for me that people don’t know what our reality is like.

I think this was the major philosophical lesson and critical reflection on the program: to see how people have no idea what political violence in Brazil is really like. The program was a one-hour version of what was, for example, a long process of high intensity like Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016. The narrative that gave social legitimacy to the impeachment was based in part on misogyny.

But what had the greatest impact was the reaction of people to sexist political violence, to the misogynistic practices on Roda Viva, which showed how women are much more organized, even if in diffuse ways, than until very recently.

I’m very young, and to run for president I became young again. I had stopped being young: I’m thirty-six years old, I’ve got twenty years of militancy and sixteen years of public office under my belt. In 2008, when I first ran for office in a majoritarian election [president, state governor, senator and mayor are majoritarian; federal and state deputies and city councilors are elected on a proportional basis], I was twenty-six years running for mayor of Porto Alegre. The [opposing] campaign as a whole was absolutely machista [male chauvinist or macho], but I didn’t have the space to talk about this.

In 2006, when I was elected state deputy, most newspapers ran misogynist coverage — even though I was a woman from the student movement. In Brazil, it was highly subversive: there are no young people in politics, there are no women in politics; and the young people that there are in politics are almost always direct descendants of other politicians. A not-insignificant number of the women who are in politics are also related to traditional politicians, so I became a talking point.

And what did the newspapers report? That I was the new “belle” of Congress.

For me, this election has a particular characteristic — being a woman taking part in this election — because this election is a landmark. It’s happening after a coup process that Brazil underwent and, as I said, this coup was greatly characterized by its misogynistic narrative.

There are two distinct issues, but it is important that we talk about both.

One question which is studied around the world is related to under-representation and the low quality of democracy, when the entirety of the population isn’t represented. In Brazil, we have a problem, which is a problem related to not having women, or for that matter black people or indigenous people, be they left or right-wing, in public office and this shows the low quality of our democracy.

We need mechanisms to increase the participation of women. They are important.

But there’s another theme, which is: who are the women who really suffer with the structure of oppression in Brazilian society? Why is it that these women, who break these barriers [glass ceiling] and take part in public entrance exams, as is the case with a section of magistrates, university professors, and in general in civil service, why don’t they respond to misogyny? It’s because inequality doesn’t affect all women equally.

If you don’t have an understanding that inequality affects women workers more, that the Brazilian state is organized on the basis of gender and racial inequality combined, that in Brazil it’s black people who are the poorest in society — due to our historical inheritance — how are you going to take on real machismo?

Liberal feminism takes on that first theme, the theme of democratic quality, of us being visible. This isn’t unimportant, but my feminism sees this from a class perspective. Gender and race subordinated to a bigger question, which is the class structure of society. In this crisis-ridden Brazil, to see the labor counter-reforms or the fiscal ceiling amendment as things that affect women and men equally — even looking only at workers — is wrong.

Secondly, is it correct for the government to continue contracting services to companies who pay women and men differently? For me, the government needs to be the spokesperson for a gender-equal society. Is it right that unemployment insurance is the same for men and women in all circumstances, if Brazilian unemployment is above all female and above all linked to maternity? For me, it is not.

Therefore, we propose to double the ceiling for unemployment insurance and extend the time [during which unemployment insurance can be claimed] for women who are mothers of children under three, because it is until three years of age that children fall under public policy, including with regard to the education system. [It’s important to] understand the structures of the state that can help emancipate women isn’t it?

We also need to show to society that we are not just the violence our uteruses suffer. Brazilian inequality is female, and Brazil will only have a real developmentalist project, for everyone, when the core of this project concerns women and black people.

I think this question doesn’t even need to touch on Lula’s origins, just take into account the interests he represents in an election such as this one — that is, an election that will be definitive of the path Brazil takes. They try to pretend this is an election in which there is the right, the left and the center, but in reality, the next government will only bring us one of two ways: either to reforms or counter-reforms.

The next government will either carry out pension reform that punishes workers, above all the poorest, or it will carry out progressive tax reform and take on the multimillionaires who don’t pay income tax in Brazil. In this context, [Lula] who [was] in first place in the polls and who could probably unify our political camp and win the elections isn’t free. It would only take him saying he’s not a candidate and I’m sure they would let him go free.

Of course, this also has to do with his background. Lula is a worker, who is the face of this unequal Brazil; he’s an internal migrant from the northeast, who came to São Paulo, which is a symbol of Brazilian capitalism because it’s our biggest metropolis, a temple of capitalist opportunity.

As with everything in capitalism, the brighter it shines, the darker its shadows. Lula is that, a migrant from the dry northeast who came here, was a factory worker, and became president of Brazil. The most successful journey in the history of the Brazilian left. Given the crisis, they know there is no way that everyone can be a winner, as everyone was a winner during his two administrations. The win-win [of Lulismo] has ended. To win today, for the working class to take on inequality, it is necessary to combat rentierism.

What we must do, first of all, is to try to understand the reasons behind people showing an interest in Bolsonaro. This is much more important than pointing fingers and going, “Oh look they’re a bunch of fascists.” Calling 28 percent of the population (which is what he’s polling) fascists, is to cast those people, who until very recently supported our project, as belonging to the other side of the spectrum.

I think that we need to reflect frankly on this. For me, people have legitimate concerns. Why? Because the crisis is vast. We’re talking about fourteen million unemployed, twenty-five million people unemployed and underemployed, who don’t know how they can feed their child at night. That is unemployment.  There are women who raise children alone, who don’t have means to pay for school — as they had two years ago. It creates panic. Of the five million people who have been looking for work for over a year, one million are young people.

A fear of the future is a legitimate sentiment. Uncertainty and insecurity together. We come from an environment of a lot of violence between the poorest people. If we map the violence, what does it show us? It shows that despite a legitimate fear on the part of the middle class, of theft and murder, the Brazilian state is a state that increases each year the number of murdered black people.

I have a lot of hope that the elections will be able to make us come to a new agreement on the important questions of our democracy. Because we need to have, between us, an intellectual coherence when we think about Brazil. If we want to say [Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment] was a coup, we need to conclude that our democracy is not the same as it was before it happened.

For me, it’s a process that is ongoing. When we decide to take part in elections, we are making a wager that this means Brazil will be able to recover democratic conditions through a clean electoral process.  Hence the importance of denouncing what happened with Lula, outside electoral concerns, and the understanding that for the crisis to be overcome, we need absolutely free elections, in which the people have the right to choose.

I think that the next government will necessarily be reformist — they’ll either be popular reforms or they’ll be counter-reforms. Either it will be a continuity of the reforms of this government [under Temer] or it will be in the other direction.

I don’t treat as a monolithic bloc the interests of rentierism, those behind Bolsonaro’s candidature, and popular interests. For me, a popular reformist project can ease tensions, because in reality theirs is an anti-popular project. That tends to pale in comparison to a project that responds to the population’s real needs: employment and security — which for me is tightly linked to the daily routine of our people, and generates a much more automatic reaction. It’s these two things [employment and security] at the end of the day.

I think the army will submit to the results of the elections. It has room to act this way, not due to the clamor of society which, always in very crisis-ridden episodes, seeks authoritarian solutions. And the armed forces have authority, and the army has room to act like this. We’re facing a government without legitimacy, without authority, who is subordinated, even in a military hierarchy to a traitor (Temer). The president didn’t respect the constitution. This is a government without any authority or credibility whatsoever.

I think the administration of Flávio [Dino, the PCdoB governor of Maranhão] is emblematic, in Brazil. It’s a state government that sought to confront the crisis in a state that is very poor state, with high social inequality.

We, PCdoB, have a project that is different to the center-right. We know how to govern well. Maranhão is the second-best state in fiscal and accounting terms, and also the second-best place for investment. We invested in infrastructure, schools, and medical facilities. These are measures opposed to fiscal austerity, to what is done nationally, and valorizes the role of the state, which is the opposite to what is sold to the world today.

Flavio did not try to govern as a communist, he tried to create a government to develop Maranhão and combat some of the lowest human development indices in Brazil. He followed this path, it worked. It wasn’t easy. Maranhão really is emblematic: it is oligarchy, extreme poverty, fragile institutions. It’s a symbol of the Brazil we want to change.