Solidarity political campaigns: social movements and food donation on Covid-19 pandemics
Keywords: social movements; collective action; food donation; pandemics; fight against hunger
SUMMARY
The Covid-19 pandemic landed in Brazil in a scenario of extreme political polarization and a deepening of the economic crisis in force since 2015, which one of its most visible effects was the resurgence of hunger among the poorest families, largely residing in the slums and outskirts of large urban centers. Immediately, a great social movement spread throughout the country, in which individuals, collectives and organizations of varied natures articulated in support networks to distribute resources in the form of money, food or essential goods. Through different campaign arrangements, economic and political links were created or updated between heterogeneous agents that make up the large universe of civil society, at the same time as they disputed in the public arena the meanings and legitimate practices of solidarity. In this work, we carried out an ethnography of two food donation campaigns in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro, both coordinated by organized social movements: the first was organized by Movimenta Caxias, an articulation between several groups of peripheral youth in the Baixada Fluminense; while the second was organized by the Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores, a national organization linked to the peasant and agroecological movements. Through the researcher's engaged participation in the campaigns, field observations, semi-structured interviews and extensive virtual research, we investigated and analyzed the different arrangements created by their coordinators in order to mobilize people, resources and narratives around food and the fight against hungry. The different collective identities, political trajectories and collective action repertoires of the organizations involved brought specific characteristics to each of the initiatives, at the same time that the two campaigns were connected by some of their central actors, so that the investigation of food flows and financial resources led us to interesting discoveries about the web of political and economic ties built from them, raising important debates about the Brazilian political situation after the pandemics, in wich different political and economic projects dispute the legitimate interactions between State, civil society and markets facing the main brazilian social problems.