KPFK-FM‘s Sojourner Truth Radio show aired an Earth Watch segment on it’s Sept. 14 broadcast focused on the coup of former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. The segment begins at about the 30:25 mark of the clip below. A transcript is also provided below.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/282898757″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

While there has been little news about the recent impeachment of Brazil’s President Dilma–which is being denounced as a coup–this corrupt act will cause wide-ranging impacts on the land and peoples of Brazil.

According to Brazil-based Winnie Overbeek, Director of World Rainforest Movement, those who supported the coup, “are the same ones that defend the rights of big business, like timber and agribusiness, that makes profits from large-scale destruction of forests and savannahs, and massive displacement of rural communities.

They are promoting an economic policy of ultra-neoliberalism and privatization, and want to reduce rights for public health, education, and workers rights. They are also pushing a constitutional reform that would allow reversal of land demarcations, enabling new land grabbing activities against indigenous and traditional peoples.

In response, social movements have been taking the streets to defend democracy and protest the new government, and to guard the rights of the people, refusing any step back in the few but important advances achieved in the past 13 years.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann, from Global Justice Ecology Project.