A tiny fare-protest group organized mass turnstile-jumping against bus price hikes

Evidence

In January in São Paulo, Mayor Gilberto Kassab (also a Lebanese-Brazilian) raised the price of a bus ride. The Movimento Passe Livre sprang into action, yet again. Six years into the existence of the group, there were less than fifty dedicated militants in the MPL, including Mayara, but they managed to get a bunch of kids and punks together, cause some trouble, and get noticed. Over three months, crowds of them marched on or invaded bus stations. They organized catracaços—mass fare evasion, carried out by jumping or breaking the catracas, or turnstiles—and faced down waves of repression from the police, though they failed to stop the price hike. As they often had in the years since their founding, they would encourage kids to go rip down any flags that anyone brought to the streets because of their fundamental opposition to parties and hierarchical organizations. Theirs was an apartidário, or “a-party” movimento, after all. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 184

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines catracaços (mass fare evasion by breaching turnstiles) and apartidário (‘a-party’) movement.
• XREF: Plausibly connects to the reader’s existing literature on decentralized, anti-hierarchical protest movements and political articulation. — connects to: A police crackdown transformed a small fare protest into a mass uprising — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 40; A bus-fare protest swelled into a citywide mass march within weeks — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 402

Broader Connections

• A bus-fare protest swelled into a citywide mass march within weeks #corroborates (0.93) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 402
• A police crackdown transformed a small fare protest into a mass uprising #expands (0.82) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 40