14/10/2026
KICHTEN TALKS is moving into the next phase of production. As we write this programme, the presidential run-off election is imminent in Brazil. And things are looking grim. The criminal Bolsonaro family is on the verge of returning to power and continuing the policies of contempt and destruction towards people and the planet that Jair Bolsonaro began, thereby driving the extinction of humanity. Carmen Silva – you may recall our interview with this remarkable woman – is currently making an urgent appeal to her fellow Brazilians. We cannot all go out and vote in Brazil. But we can raise our awareness and keep our attention focused on what is happening in many parts of the world. Wherever terrible things are happening, it helps our people a little to know that their suffering and fears are not going unnoticed worldwide. And in Brazil, too, this election is not yet decided. We hope for Carmen, for Brazil and for all of us that the majority of Brazilians will not fall for the populist doomsayers – even if it is to their own detriment. Here, then, is Carmen’s urgent appeal to her compatriots in these perilous times: Eu preciso te pedir uma coisa.
I need to ask you for something. Hello, how are you?
I’m writing to you today, Carmen. Over the last few days, my team has told you the story of the ‘Ocupação 9 de Julho’, my background and my goals. Today I’d like to write in my own words, because what I have to say to you is something personal.
I arrived in São Paulo in 1990 and had nowhere to sleep. As a mother of eight children, I lived in emergency shelters, slept on the streets and experienced fear. If someone had told me back then that one day I’d be standing two days before an election, asking for votes for the position of state assembly member, I would have laughed. A Black woman from the North-East, homeless? In the state assembly?
Exactly. We’ve made it this far.
And I didn’t get here on my own. I got here with every family who occupied a derelict building with me, with every mother who kept the door open in the face of an impending eviction, with every person who had lunch at the soup kitchen on a Sunday and went home knowing they’d helped to feed two more people. Over the past 30 years, we have transformed dereliction into a home: more than 3,000 decent flats have already been handed over.