Who's behind today's Brazil protests?

View high resolution 

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Whos-Behind-Sundays-Marches-in-Brazil–20150814-0019.html

Who’s behind Sunday’s marches in Brazil?

Protests are expected to take place across Brazil on Sunday against the Workers Party government of president Dilma Rousseff. But who is behind the protests and why?

As of late, things for Rousseff’s government have not been good. Despite effecting massive social gains under both her administration and that of her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the economy is now faltering and inflation is on the rise. Leading members of the Workers Party have been implicated in the Lava Jato scandal involving the country’s state oil company, Petrobras, and Rousseff’s approval rating has dropped to under 10 percent.

Though the Workers Party is just one of a number of major Brazilian parties implicated in the scandal, the mainstream media, led by Brazil’s largest news network Rede Globo, and the opposition, has focused their sole attention on the PT, attempting to wear down the Rousseff administration and tarnish the nearly rock-star public approval of former president Lula. The goal: take down the Workers Party government, by any means necessary. 

In March and April, the same groups that are calling for this Sunday’s protests held extensive anti-government marches. More than a million largely upper-class Brazilians marched across the country. Those in the crowds called for president Rousseff to step down, or called on the Brazilian military to intervene.

Among the groups behind the protests — both earlier this year and this Sunday — are a series of fairly new right-wing organizations, formed over social media, with well over a million total followers online, and some powerful and wealthy backing. As one article in the Brazilian magazine Piaui put it in April, these groups essentially make up what you could call the Brazilian Tea Party.

Among them are the Free Brazil Movement, Students for Liberty, Come to the Streets, Revolted Online, Advances Brazil, Masons BR, Wake up Brazil, Brazil Best, In The Streets, Beloved homeland, UND (Democratic Nationalist Union) and Straighten Brazil. This Sunday’s protests have also been backed by the major conservative opposition party PSDB.