A BLACK TRAVESTI HURRICANE

Last week, Brazil experienced an incredible surge in workers’ power. Yes, power, not just resistance. For the first time in years, we stopped merely defending ourselves against far‑right attacks and finally won a new right: the reduction of weekly working hours. Until now, the constitution had set a 44‑hour workweek as the standard, which enabled the so‑called 6x1 shift—an inhumane, anti‑worker schedule that forced people to work six days and rest only one.

Even though many professions had already adopted a 40‑hour workweek, allowing people to work “only” five days and rest on weekends, most so‑called “unskilled” workers—especially those in services and retail—were stuck with the 6x1 shift, losing precious time for leisure, family, and study. That is why the main movement created to fight this schedule was called Life Beyond Work (VAT – Vida Além do Trabalho, in Portuguese).

But the twist—or maybe the irony, for those who dismiss LGBTQIA+ people as “identitarians”—came from those leading this movement: Rick Azevedo, a Black queer man elected as a city council member in Rio de Janeiro, and Erika Hilton, a Black travesti¹ congresswoman, one of the most voted and most vocal voices of the left today. Together, they managed to place one of the most important aspects of workers’ lives—the length of the working day—at the center of a broader debate about life, family, and leisure.

By connecting the fight to the struggles of social minorities, such as women’s rights, anti‑racism, and LGBTQIA+ rights, the movement quickly mobilized Erika and Rick’s base of supporters. Data have consistently shown that workers in the services and retail sectors are, in their majority, women, Black, LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities. As a result, the campaign gathered enormous political support from those who are usually left out of classical white, cishet, male Marxist analyses—people often denied recognition as part of the working class.

At the center of this achievement stand a Black travesti and a Black queer man whose leadership exposes how those treated as minorities in politics are, in fact, the majority in the world of labor. Their protagonism in this struggle does more than change the law on working hours; it reveals the power of people who were never supposed to reach the microphone, let alone win a fight of this scale. In the end, they were responsible for one of the greatest victories of the working class—and those Marxists (alongside TERFs) will have to live with that.

Granted, the far right is already organizing its backlash. But you can find bad news anywhere on the internet. This newsletter is, after all, a space for hope and resistance :)

I will develop this great news further in the next issues, because this story is still far from over.

Thank you so much,
Hailey