Hip Hop Organized Movement (MH20) and São Bento Group

To validate historical experiences of the national hip-hop movement that were aimed at the prevention and resistance to violence, especially those concerning institutions and police against Black and poor youth living in the outskirts of big cities. The goal is to strengthen campaigns and current experiences by rescuing and disseminating the memory/history of this movement through various platforms: website, social networks, videos, and most of all through the five elements of Hip-Hop: Rap MC, Historian DJ, the Bboy dance, Graffiti and Knowledge, mixing them all together.

Gathering 700 hundred people every end of the month, in traditional Hip-Hop meetings at São Bento subway station (downtown São Paulo).

Holding a large meeting at the end of the year, launching the historical campaign: Brazilian Hip Hop: old school and new generation together against violence

Implementing and launching an on-line memorial about the initiative “Hip-Hop: Street Culture Against Violence”, rescuing the entire collection and the stories.

Designing training material, both printed and in the form of videos, documenting the history of Black resistance and Hip-Hop to the various networks/forums/campaigns against the genocide involving Black and poor populations today.

The “Citizen Constitution” of 1988 was also the result of many of the struggles lived by the pioneers of the Black Movement and Hip-Hop in Brazil over the decades of 1970-80, in the demonstrations organized by citizens for democracy and citizenship rights for Black and poor people. Towards the 30th anniversary of the Constitution, we are still forced to live with numerous failures.

Many of the human rights that are ensured by the Constitution, such as the right to life and freedom, are still being violated, nowadays. Among these problems, one of the remainders of the slave period and, more recently, from the military dictatorship is the systematic violence of state agents against the Black and poor population.

Police violence is now one of the main problems to be faced in Brazil, especially in Sao Paulo.

The persistence of torture in regular, everyday police approaches and inside police stations, used as an “investigation technique”; the mass incarceration of people (Brazil currently occupies the 4th position worldwide with more than 550,000 people deprived of liberty, among those about 250,000 in the state of São Paulo); and, extrajudicial executions systematically committed by state agents characterize a very serious situation regarding the basic citizenship of a big part of our population.

 

The movement is composed of the first generation of Hip-Hop Movement activists in Brazil, the pioneers of the legendary meetings in São Bento subway station in São Paulo, in the 70s and 80s. Inspired by the historic Black movement, since its beginning, the fight against violence directed towards poor an Black youth marked their attitude, letters, songs, dance and all socio-cultural interventions.

The two main groups behind this proposal, the Hip-Hop Organized Movement and São Bento Group – Pioneers of the National Hip-Hop scene, are part of a wide network of hip-hop posses, BBoys crews, graffiti artists, hip-hop artists and groups, as well as several other networks against the genocide of Black youth living in the outskirts of big cities.