Andrew Koleski
5/516
ENG 306
Stephanie Brown
Protesting Police Brutality in Brazil
In the country
of Brazil, there are many problems that many would say need to be addressed.
Included in those problems are labor rights, reproductive rights, rural
violence, poverty, and problems with the military. However, one area where
there most definitely seems to be the largest amount of injustice and pain is
police brutality. In the year 2013 there were more than 2,000 deaths reported because of police activity (Human Rights Watch, 2015) . This
comes out to about 6 people per day. (Human Rights Watch, 2015). In fact, there was over 300 killings in
the state of Rio de Janeiro and over 150 killings in the state of Sao Paulo in the
first months of that year. (Human Rights Watch, 2014).
When it comes to
successfully protesting the abuse and poor conduct of the police, the Brazilian
people have come up short. Many people in Brazil, while incredibly saddened,
angered, and displeased with what happens, do not speak out against the
justice, and prefer to stay silent so that they do not suffer the same fate
as their countrymen. However, there are those that do protest, however these
protests have been ineffective. It is important to note that when there are
peaceful protests, the police do not seem to care and proceed to beat the
protestors away, and in many cases do so without incident. Even when there are
cameras or members of the press at these protests, the police continue to
respond with violence and often go as so far to turn on the press at some events.
The brutality of
the police, in Brazil, has created some protests within the country. The point is
to bring notice to the injustice caused by authorities, and to end what the protestors believe to be atrocities
committed by the police. However, the protests have not been all that
successful, usually ending in violence even though the vast majority of them
are meant to be peaceful. A main problem is that, as of right now; there are
only two main groups of characters, the police, and those protesting the police. In order to be successful,
the protestors must first
focus on a goal, choose a speaker that will convey their message to the people
of Brazil, and appeal to government authority rather than the normal population
of Brazil. * (Paragraph Structure - See below)
When looking at
the results of the protests, there are some problems that become apparent in
the protest as a whole. Most noticeable, though quite confusing, is that as the
protestors are denouncing the police brutality in Brazil, there does not seem
to be that much of an audience, or at least an audience that will act. As
mentioned before, many people in Brazil try their best to ignore the reality of
police brutality in the country, and as such it becomes very difficult for the
Brazilians to find out who to protest to. They cannot appeal to law
enforcement, because law enforcement is exactly the problem they are
protesting, and they have found that even trying to appeal to their fellow
countrymen has garnered little to no results. Perhaps something that could help
would be to look outside their country. Rather than plead or complain to the authorities
of the regime they are protesting, maybe it would be a good idea to get the
word out to other parts of the world. Of course, there have been reports of the
protests from different media outlets from different countries, but news media does
not have to be the only thing protestors relay their message to. There are
various organizations, such as the United Nations, Humans Rights Watch, and
Amnesty International who specialize in educating their readers on injustices
in the world. These groups have profiles of countries, of course, but maybe if
the protest organizers gave these group very specific details, it might help
rally people outside the country to their cause, and could increase international pressure
on those in power.
Another problem
that seems to have come into focus is that there seems to be a group of
protestors that lack unity in order to become better organized, and therefore
their final goal seems to be confusing. With this problem, it practically makes
it impossible for them to convey their main message, and also what their goals
are. Of course, it is easy to say that they want to end police brutality, but
then what? Surely after hopefully achieving their goals and successfully
“ending” police brutality, where do they go from there? Do they then try to
change laws in the country, to make sure that police brutality is never again
the norm? And also, how would they enforce the laws or, to put it into a
simpler question, who would police the police? Before trying to protest and
change things, the protest would work better if they stated a clear goal to the
police. Of course, the main goal is to stop police brutality, but they may want
to mention specifics. For example, while using loudspeakers, or chanting
slogans during the protest, tell law enforcement exactly what needs to change,
such as there being less police presence on the street, or that every
policemen/women goes through peace training. Also, it might help to demand new
laws within the government. A law that could help would perhaps be a Police
Decency Act. Within this law, the government could make the police accountable
for the action. Rather than fire them, the law could threaten police brutality
with a minimum of five years in jail.
A big problem
that the protesters also need to work on is their lack of a speaker, or author.
Without a main voice to lead the group, the protestors have no one to look up
to as their leader. With a leader, the protestors could then have somebody to
follow, and therefore be a more coherent group rather than protestors that
scatter whenever the police, or those in authority, “punish” them. Also, much
like the previous point about lack of organization, it make their message much
less clearer, and without a clear message or goal, how are they supposed to get
people to join them in anger or protest? Finding somebody who wants to be the
speaker of a protest is easy, but finding the right somebody is not. A perfect way to go about this would be to
incorporate ethos, the appeal to expertise. In order to accomplish this, the protestors
would do well to pick a speaker who is close to the subject, and also someone
who may have vast knowledge of law enforcement. For this role, the protestors
should find an ex-policemen or official. This helps because when the speaker
talks, his followers or audience will know that the atrocities or injustice he
is speaking of is true.
Finally, it
seems to be that they are lacking in persuasive speech. In order to better get
their message across, they seem to be going down the road of using violence as
the answer to get what they want. While this could be an effective method, and
has been used in the past with other protests, perhaps it might be a better
idea to use speech as a way to unite people. In fact, why not use logos as a
way to accomplish this? Even though most of their protests have been peaceful,
and even though most of the violence is caused by those with the authority,
especially the police, it might not make sense to that many Brazilians that the
way to protest violence is with violence, and they may simply see clashes on
television as disobedient citizens attempting to harm and disrespect authority.
For example, it would probably work well if they used the rhetorical strategy
of ethos, or appealing to one’s emotion. As evidenced by the violence that can
come of the protests, it is evident that the idea of law enforcement, thought
to be responsible for maintaining order and justice, are the problem, can stir
much emotion. By playing to participant’s emotion, they could perhaps convince a
viewer, or reader, that their cause is just.
In conclusion,
it is important to note that there are many protests that aren't successful,
this one included, however if one wants to have a successful protest they may
want to change the course of their rhetoric, especially if it depends too much
on it being violent. For this specific protest, it would help if the protestors
backed off from being so loud and physical and instead, used strategies such as
ethos, pathos, and logos. By doing this, it would help their message connect
with viewers/readers, appeal to their audiences’ emotions, and help themselves
keep a clear head and not depend so much on violence.
Conclusion Explanation: The main purpose of this conclusion was to zero in on what I felt was the main cause of failure in the protest, the emphasis on violence or physical protest. I also wanted to point out that, as mentioned in earlier parts of the paper, how the rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos would greatly improve this protest and could help it to be more successful over time.
* The purpose of this paragraph was to show the main characters of the protest, the police and the protestors. However, my paper only focuses on one of the characters; the protesters. The other purpose was to create a topic string of sorts. For this, I used a focus topic string since the paragraph really only focused one set of characters, the protestors.
Works Cited
"World Report 2014: Brazil, Events of 2013". Human Rights Watch, 2016
"World Report 2015: Brazil, Events of 2014". Human Rights Watch, 2016
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