Waching daily Feb 26 2018

I think, for me, most young people

that are born in the context of periphery,

social exclusion...

I think we were born with our heads kinda...

we were breathing with our heads out.

We were born in the middle of a flood.

So we have no much choice

on what to dream about, what to do

I think we've been through this...

by these transformations of understanding this throughout...

later, throughout life.

When I understood that, that I could be what I wanted to,

a lot has changed for me.

Whoever comes from where I come has nothing to hope for.

It's very difficult to escape criminality, underemployment,

or normal, but bad, jobs that do not fulfill one's potential.

Sounds like that fine tuning, you know?

That is an argument people use

to justify God's existence in science,

which I don't know if really justifies the existence of God,

but it justifies the existence of the poor in good places of work,

because that is it, it seems like

you have exactly what is necessary to get there.

If you'd changed just a little,

if you'd embarked in a wrong bus, you wouldn't be where you are.

The question of work, of providing your existence

in a way... within a cultural standard,

is what distinguishes society, mankind from other animals.

So, in fact, I think work is central to life,

it gives meaning to life.

What one has done with its work, that is another issue.

Then you will have everything that goes on with work.

Where work divides itself,

physical labor, intellectual work.

When work becomes a source of wealth

for one part of society and for another part, it does not.

So there you have a history of work,

which is a history of exclusion. But work itself,

that is, the idea of working, of accomplishing, transforming,

I think it is fundamental for mankind,

I think that is what defines mankind.

When I was seven, in my mind, in my head,

when I was playing, unintentionally,

very intuitively,

perhaps, I had already chosen what I wanted to do in life,

for a moment, which was to work as a garbage collector.

It was there in the dead end street where I played,

especially on the days of garbage collection, in the garbage heap.

Then, when the truck came up to collect it,

I kept trying to throw a small bag in it.

My dream was to become a garbage collector,

but as the garbage company wasn't hiring at the time,

the only way out I saw at the moment

was to enter another company

which performed urban cleaning in the city of São Paulo.

But we only dream about the height of our own ceiling.

After I dreamed about going to college, I went to study,

I finished high school and went to environmental management,

that I understood

much more the value chain that involves the waste, garbage.

My mother had a strategy, let's work not to get pregnant,

because there is a very large occurrence of teenage pregnancy.

And, when I was 16, I had the idea of studying medicine,

and I went to tell my father.

And my father said, "Daughter, medicine is not for us,

because we are black, we are poor, we are from the periphery."

And then I started thinking about careers for whites and for blacks.

I started to wonder, "There are places for blacks only?"

So, in the 2nd semester of my pedagogy junior year

I got an internship in Band's HR.

And then, when I started to make employees selection in Band,

I began to realize there were no black candidates.

Finally, at the end of 2004,

I met a group of FATEC's black students,

and the leader of the group, my friend Rodrigo Faustino, told me:

"Create an employability project for blacks."

Then, "EmpregueAfro" was born, at the end of 2004, like that.

Let's do our project, come to our project,

the "20-20," which has this name because our goal

is to reach 2020 with 20% of positions in work agencies

being filled by black professionals.

And, in strategic areas,

we are talking about creation, services, planning and media.

So, I think this tensioning

"I want a meaningful job, a job that I like,"

it began to surface strongly, I think for some young people,

including young people from the grassroots.

I think this also has to do

with expanding access to education.

Because it also creates expectations

of having a better job. But it comes up against

structural constraints of this society.

First, when you speak of this vocation,

I think, first, we have to think that this is built.

No one is born to be one thing or another.

These things are built. And they are also

built from possibilities

and constraints that are placed on these young people.

Many of them are subjected to very great constraints,

to construct this idea that I will do what I want.

And then, after about one and a half year later,

of me participating in this project as an educator,

I became an educator of these workshops.

Then, I became an educator at DJ workshops,

guitar and MC, at all three workshops.

And that was my first contact with the act of undertaking.

I believe our impact is this.

We have become an alternative to some people,

and we are impacting them to find out who they are.

Often in a two-hour, an hour and a half meeting,

trying to dismantle what was built

for a kid during his whole life.

That it cannot believe in itself.

And within dangerous communities this is harder,

because we have an education

that shapes kids for the job market...

as robots, cattle, where you are not an existing being,

you a physical body, that produces all the time,

but nobody cares about what you think, who you are,

what you do, what your gift is,

what is your mission on this plane. So, this is it,

it's much more difficult to talk to this kids

when you have a structural problem,

when you are build your whole life

to be a labeled cattle in the field.

And we arrive speaking of our form,

the posture we have, and we say, "No, bro, there is an alternative,

you don't have to be cattle.

Jump out the fence. Get out of this."

Many times, I, as a hip-hop representative,

I was the first person the kid,

in a public school, has found,

that asked what its dream was.

His family had no time to ask this,

its teachers, street friends.

And, before I decided to work on garbage collection,

my youth was tainted by this context.

Then, I faced the need of having to make money,

I already had my groups. Then, the young person, it has this issue

of belonging as well.

And I want to be a protagonist of my story, as well.

But, at first, I was channeling this energy

in what I knew, which was the traffic, at first.

So, this led me to juvenile prison.

And then, when I run away, I talk to my parents,

and we did this reflection together,

my father hit the table and said I had to solve it.

And in that moment he beats and says I have to solve it,

it creates a silence. And it's in that silence that I find

the courage that was lacking.

This conversation changed the course of my life.

Then the rest of the steps I gave,

which I'm giving, were the result of this first big step,

which, in fact, isn't a first big step,

I want to make clear that I think that...

And then, for the young person who will see this video;

what is the first great micro step you can give

heading towards what you really want?

What is this small step? Is it a conversation with someone?

Is it a resume? I don't know. Is it an apology?

So the act of my father having put himself in this place

contributed a lot, you see? And it was a simple act,

it was a small step.

From the second half of the 21th century, a little further even,

the idea that prevailed in society

is that public policy for youth had to be education.

Because it was projected, since the beginning of public school,

after World War II, mainly,

this idea was projected...

that young people... youth is a time of preparation.

Preparation between the protection of childhood

and emancipation of adulthood.

So, it's the time of preparation for the world of work.

Another conception began to dispute the concept of youth,

which was the idea that youth is a present time.

This conception of youth, at first, is that

youth is not a time of transition, of passing.

We need to think about...

policies, or demands,

in response to the demand of young people,

while they are young.

When I came here at CIEJA Campo Limpo by the first time,

this was one of the places that welcomed me.

You have a manager who

looks at each student. And I was not even a student,

I saw a lecture from her, and I came to see the school,

after hearing her speak.

And one of the things in her speech that caught my attention

was that the school gate is open.

And she stopped what she was doing to show me the school

and tell me more about the school. Then I felt very important.

Because I wasn't the mayor, I was not the Secretary of Education,

I wasn't even a student.

What school is this that welcomes people?

Then, by hearing, I got this curiosity.

Then it was a wedding.

From the first day I came, I have not stopped coming.

I became a volunteer.

Because if I only use blackboard and chalk,

I'll lose my students. I'll lose them

if I don't play a music,

if I don't ask about their family,

if I don't tell a story that is similar to theirs,

if I give no meaning to their life,

a way out to things that happen; sense, paths.

If I don't put different strategies on the table.

If I don't sit down and say, "Now we'll talk about it,

we'll talk about that. Oh, have you seen that?"

Who says it is bad for us to see an opera, for example?

What about hip-hop culture?

If you take opera and hip-hop culture,

and the issue of time, metrics?

I'm not a musician, but let's look at this process?

Metrics, math. How mathematics and music relates?

When you tie a knot, not a positivist one,

because positivism puts you in boxes, in that process,

when you tie a knot in the student, it speaks like this:

"Bro, you are very crazy, man."

This is one of our favorite places, by its view.

Because you can see

what we call landmarks of Capão.

There is Fundão. Capão Redondo subway,

"S" Hill, Itapecerica Road.

Hip-hop, for me, was a compass, a path.

It showed me something that

I have lived through years of my life without knowing it.

I lived in a place where...

many positive and negative things were both offered.

And, unfortunately, the negative ones

were much closer than the positive ones.

There was a process to get to the positive ones.

Negatives ones, I'd open my home's front gate and they'd be there.

For young people who have fewer resources, fewer financial,

educational, symbolic, and cultural resources

to face it, this is even harder,

even more difficult. Although...

that's the point I want to address,

since they don't have a great hope in having a future,

their parents want them to survive, that they...

don't die early.

Your parents may be more open to new things.

New possibilities, new ways of undertaking.

It's almost a reversal.

Usually, we would say that you have more freedom to create

if you have more resources.

But in a world with so much unforeseen things

and so much insecurity, it is often these young people

who invent interesting things that heads to the future.

Education is the basis of everything and more,

especially this non-formal education,

our education as a society,

our political, philosophical education.

That's what we'll get...

making people see other possibilities.

People are taught, as long as they have a right time

to enter school and a time to leave it,

some clothes to wear, a task to perform at that school,

and are trained to enter and leave at a such time in a company

and perform a certain task.

And that's it, one will get its school reward, that's the grade,

its reward at work, that's the money,

and so we learn it.

I think we will only learn other ways of relating

to work, relating to people, and everything else

when we understand other ways of relating to education.

We went to perform a play at Casa Foundation.

Then we arrived, everybody in makeup,

and we presented a play. In the end, we had a debate with them,

and, that was funny, in the end, they asked:

"Do you work with it? How do you make money?

Is there such a job? Are you here because

you're having fun doing theater? Is there such a job?"

We presented the play in many schools,

we had 140 presentations. And we always did this debate,

and one of the things we always tried to talk about is:

"There is job as a makeup artist, costume designer, set designer,

actor, director, sound technician, technician...

There are a myriad of jobs you can work on,

just inside this little universe of a play...

You have groups of young people creating

what we now call periphery culture.

We are not talking about a physical, geographical place,

we are talking about a number of cultural resources

that were collected by these young people,

who made some stigmas, actually, some...

some labels that would be periphery's.

And hip-hop movement played a major role in that.

Going from stigma to emblem.

And, going from stigma to emblem,

it will make it to be highlighted.

And it's a way to review the place one lives,

not for what lacks in it, but for what it has.

For me, garbage is much more, there is no garbage, actually.

Imagine if you are on a boat and...

traveling for a week. Where do you put it?

Do you throw it away? You throw it in the sea.

There is no outside.

Everything is within, I think we are part of nature as well.

So, all this, the university also helps in the act of thinking,

of reading some things.

That is why it is important to have access to education.

So my life has changed a lot too.

To be able to study.

So that's what I'm trying to do, always.

In these conversations, lecturing at schools,

when a young person comes to me to talk about some subject,

or even to talk about the job market,

how he can... I ask about its skills, you know?

I think every young person has this potential,

but the business environment, the work environment,

cannot absorb this intelligence today.

Because the young person is unhappy

by only punch a card, pack and then go home.

I think big dreams lead to high goals.

It leads us to understand... I spent a lot of my life

looking at people who were in very high positions,

reading about their life stories, their careers and thinking:

"How did she get there?

How did Michelle Obama get there?

What training does she has, what path has she followed?"

Do not stick to what went wrong,

do not stick to those who fight against you.

Stick to what you want, to your dream,

to what is positive within you, the people you love,

the people who love you, those who give you something good.

Which have real feelings for you.

Stick to it, because it is very difficult to live

if we stick to it, if we don't ignore it,

but if we stick to it, we won't live.

Then you will only pay your bills,

you'll never become what you want to be.

Learn from those who want to teach you something,

understand social structures, so that you are not abused,

so that no one crushes your self-esteem,

your sanity, your will to live.

Because every day there is someone wanting to do it.

Everyday. This is for everyone.

So, search within yourself what makes you live and go on.

Dreams are fundamental

because they are the things that move us to do things.

So, I think it's exactly in moments of difficulty,

of crisis... of course, you cannot deceive yourself,

you cannot get away from existing issues.

I don't thing young people do that.

I'm very impressed with the lucidity young people have.

When I began my dissertation, I went to study punks,

and punks were seen

as heralds of apocalypse, of chaos.

What they said is, "There is no future for us."

But, in fact, saying, "There is no future,"

it doesn't mean they were not dreaming,

they had no expectations or desires for a transformation.

My dreams these days?

Yesterday I was thinking a lot about the Nobel Prize, you know?

"Noble" or Nobel, I don't know.

To be president of the Republic.

I have many dreams.

There are many,

but there is one I'm paying a lot of attention to,

which is resignificance

of the violence stereotype that was imposed to the periphery.

For begin with I demand respect

I dialog words and silence

That emerge from my chest

I traded the pistol for a pair of gloves

But I confess that even I sometimes lost myself

And I couldn't see myself

The garbage seemed endless

But my end could not be in the garbage

And for you who still doubts that even in the dump a flower appears

Here I am, a manager

Poetry of my life.