At 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon, met in Porto, at the top of Avenida dos Aliados, a circle of people wearing a mask, led by the voice of Navváb Aly Danso, blogger and activist who created the event “Justice for Bruno Candé”, following the homicide of the actor on Avenida de Moscavide, after shots fired allegedly by a 76-year-old man. This is the fourth time that anti-racism movements take to the streets this year.
Spread across the circle, the demonstrators displayed posters with convinced messages: “The truth hurts, violence hurts”, “We are here”, “Denying racism is racism”, “Portugal, ‘incognito father’ from Ultramar”. Amid collective screams of “Racists, fascists, they won’t pass!” and “We are here”, there were several voices that were heard through a megaphone, telling personal stories of the racism that is experienced in Portugal.
One of these stories is that Mariana Modesto, a 17 year old girl who reveals that she missed “three years of school” because of the bullying who suffered from being “black”, the word that appears stamped on the t-shirt by Navváb Aly Danso. When changing schools, Mariana says that she “got over” the traumas she suffered, but the struggle has only just started: “I’m tired of living in fear”, she says, reporting that her father works in France, “from Monday to Friday, without rest ”, receiving“ the salary of a white man who works four hours ”. His grandfather, on the other hand, was murdered in Guinea, “his land, the country he loved”, he laments.
Navváb Aly Danso shares with the PUBLIC that the whole demonstration consisted of an attempt to “gather forces and share the injustice that is Portugal, a country that they deny being racist”. “This violent act brought us to the street”, he stresses, “even in times of pandemic, it is important for us”. Navváb says he is a victim of racism in “transport and public services” through “looks” and “lack of respect”.
At the end of the demonstration, fists were raised in the air – white, black, of all colors – after, whenever the name “Bruno Candé” was shouted through the megaphone, all the voices came together in unison to exclaim: “Present! ”.
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