In Sao Paulo alone, at least 135 demonstrators were arrested. Some of them were tourists, who were targeted as “terrorists” by cops, along with other 30 demonstrators who took refuge in a hotel on Augusta street to escape the brutality of the military police. The military riot police took the hotel by siege and held everyone inside hostage: “When they realized they lost control of the situation, the military police simply invaded the lobby of the hotel, and without even bothering to make any distinction between demonstrators and tourists, employed violence and death threats to contain a riot that did not exist in the first place,” Midia Ninja reported. The video below shows cops violently breaking in, pointing their guns at people they took hostage, and even firing what seems to be a tear gas canister in a small closed area. It was clear that they didn’t consider the minimum range for shooting rubber bullets. A rubber bullet fired from less than 20 meters can be lethal.

Cops attacked and beat people at random in the hotel lobby, as this student, a victim and a witness says. The Military Police claim they beat him so badly because he had allegedly injured “the finger” of one of their officers. Cops shot a protester twice – in the chest and in his genitals – as they claimed Fabricio Chaves resisted arrest, but a lawyer who is helping the demonstrators arrested by the cops says the police version of the story is confusing and is not supported by facts. The protester, 22 years old, is hospitalized and badly wounded. The activists of the movement Nao Vai Ter Copa (“Cup will not be”) announced that there will be a vigil on Monday at 17:00, in front of Santa Casa, where Fabricio Chaves is hospitalized, for all demonstrators injured by the military police. They hope to make mainstream media see “the brutal police violence.”

It’s likely that cops used such brutal tactics because this was a grass-roots organised nation-wide mass protest, and “the first great action against the World Cup” which is due in June (Revolution News maintained a live blog during the events). Protests took place in 36 cities to #stoptheball from stealing the houses of 170,000 poor people living in the slums, and from spending 25 billion dollars on stadiums and parking lots. All of this while schools are decaying, hospitals are “like war zones,” and a fifth of people live in utter misery, millions of them without water or electricity, and living in huts. In the name of billion dollar profits for FIFA, the government has taken even these huts from them, leaving them homeless.

But it’s not just about the cup and the olympic games (due in two years), even though these together will cost the people of Brazil some 59 billion dolars. Add to that other 50 billion in corruption. The cup is the point which brings to light what more and more people resist today in Brazil: “that the State and the Capital are siamese brothers.” For four years, people in Brazil have self-organized horizontally, and fought back against gentrification attacks, prices hikes, curtailed liberties, and increased exploitation of workers. For for years they have been fighting just for the freedom to live. People strike against transportation hikes, and refuse to pay. Their protests are colorful and sophisticated yet simple: sometimes they bring the beach to the city squares, they wear bikinis and have gatherings where they discuss publicly what concerns their lives. It’s a form of protest against the destruction of Bernardo Monteiro street, an important green area in the city which was destroyed by the State and capitalism.