As Trump Tries to Steal Brazilian Election, Send a Labor Reporter as an Election Observer

Folks, 

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Most publications are ignoring Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to steal the Brazilian presidential election set for late October.

Already, the Lula Administration has denied several visas to Trump operatives whom they believed were coming to Brasil to undermine election results. Things are only about to get uglier as GOP Congressman make calls to imprison Lula.

​This is why it is important that Payday sends a veteran labor reporter like me with two decades of Brasil experience down to cover it and distribute our work widely This will be expensive, but international solidarity is worth it.

​I am fluent in Portuguese and have extensive experience covering both the Brazilian labor movement and Lula on the ground in Brasil. My reporting was recognized when Lula’s staff invited me to go inside the Oval Office to cover Lula’s state visit with Biden in 2023.

For years, I have been covering how the Rio Police Chief and a Brazilian Congressman were convicted for the assassination of socialist Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018. It was a tremendous victory for Brasil, which in the past year also convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro of attempting to assassinate Lula.

Marielle Franco and I studied sociology together at PUC-Rio in the middle of the 2000s, and I’ve tracked the story closely while most North American media outlets ignored it. For the past four years, I have been filming Marielle Vive, a documentary on the fight for justice for Marielle Franco.

​Last time I was in Brasil for a presidential election, in 2022, the military shut down the main bridge between Rio de Janeiro and Niterói to intimidate voters. The federal highway police set up hundreds of checkpoints around the country to block voters from getting to polls in key Lula precincts.

​In 2025, Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of using the military to attempt a coup. They even found that Bolsonaro plotted to use the special forces to have Lula assassinated.

​Thankfully, the Biden Administration made it very clear to key members of the Brazilian military that a coup would not be tolerated. He also made it very clear that Brasil would face economic sanctions.

​Now, Brazilian democracy doesn’t have an ally in the United States. Still, we can send an American labor reporter like me down to cover Brazilian trade unionists' fight for democracy.

​Things are gonna be rough, and international solidarity is going to be crucial to fighting these fascists. I need your funding to do the type of reporting that I have done in Brasil for decades and distribute it widely to outlets in the United States.

​More than twenty years ago, I became interested in Brasil after my Dad, a UE union rep, told me about Lula. An autoworker union leader, Lula had led a series of bold strikes against multinational auto companies that helped bring down the dictatorship that ruled Brasil from 1964-1988.

​At the age of 17, I started studying Portuguese, pursued it in college, and then studied for three semesters in Brasil. At the time, my host father, Claudio Roberto Castilho, an eccentric Brazilian art professor, treated me like a surrogate son. Being so far from Pittsburgh, he was like a father who helped me navigate many confusing and complicated situations in Brasil.

​For the past 20 years, Claudio has let me stay with him in Brasil as long as I help out with utilities, groceries, and other household bills. Once again, I will be staying with Claudio to save money, but I still need to pay bills and hire a local journalist to help me navigate the sometimes dangerous situations in Brasil.

In a few weeks, we will have a preview of the Marielle Vive documentary, but in the interim, check out this clip of our interview with her widow, Mônica Benício. She’s running for Senate right now, and polling shows her leading.

​Now, we need your help to cover this trip. It will be expensive. I will need to hire a local journalist to help with safety while I am down there.

​At the same time, I will continue to pay Amos Wolf's salary, our multimedia editor here in Pittsburgh, who is going on paternity leave. We estimate that we will need to raise $5,000 to pull off this crucial project.

​Can you donate to help us cover this crucial election in the largest remaining democracy in the Americas?

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