Grita Baixada Forum

Strengthen the political influence carried out by the Grita Baixada Forum in the discussions on public security and in the field of human rights.

• Produce a documentary with victims of violence and their families.
• Hold meetings on human rights and public safety.
• Hold training activities in public schools.
• Develop communication materials.
• Register the meetings (photos, videos).
• Organize the first round of exhibitions and discussions of the Baixada Fluminense cineclubes (film clubs) on human rights.

The Death Squads in the late1960s, the Extermination Groups in the 1980s, the election of assassins to political office in the 1990s, the drug trafficking increase, and militia emergence in the years 2000 and 2010: over this period, the structures of political power and economic and socio-cultural gains based on violence have been consolidated, modified and reconfigured permanently. The expansion of violence has always been at the service of interests that have never been threatened or interrupted. Increasingly frightening levels of violence end in ineffective solutions, neglect and abandonment. The war on the poor, pictured as if it was directed at drug trafficking, is the institutional answer. The darker the skin, the poorer the individual, the more segregated the dwelling, the less educated the mind and the greater the punitive discharge that turns the victim into culprit, reduces the human to indexes and raises the prices in the crime market.

The Grita Baixada Forum was created as a space for discussion, training, and incentive to the organization, articulation and mobilization and search of collective solutions by civil society to the social and human rights issues in the Baixada Fluminense. It was created due to the increasing rates of violence in the region in recent years. The lack of solutions to this issue motivated the request in 2012 of a meeting with the State Government on the subject of public security. On July 25, 2012, in Nova Iguaçu, a meeting was held to prepare an open letter to the authorities. The Secretary of Security at the time, José Mariano Beltrame, said that it was the “first time that the Baixada screamed so loud”, which gave rise to the name of the Forum. The Chatuba and Japeri massacres, with the deaths of nine people – eight of them between 12 and 18 years old – generated a great mobilization to organize a manifest to repudiate and sensitize society through an ecumenical walk organized by the Forum. The Forum works with advocacy, mobilization, and training, carrying out activities to fight the homicides of Black, young and poor people.