Get the F-Word as a podcast -- wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the Laura Flanders Show.

On the Assassination of Marielle Franco.

What happened in Rio De Janeiro March 14 wasn’t unusual.

A Black lesbian leftist, child of the favelas, was gunned down in public, probably by an agent of the state.

Favela families die daily. Crammed together in poorly constructed homes, on streets with scarce investment. If the poverty doesn’t get you, violence or depression might. From the favelas on Rio’s mountainsides, you can actually see Rio’s multi-million dollar beach fronts. Poverty and depression and violence claim favela people all the time. And, increasingly, so do cops.

In 2017, police killed over 1,000 people just in Rio. The poorer you are, the more danger you’re in. In the last few years, the Brazilian establishment’s been making lots of choices to invest in real estate, the Olympics, corporate tax breaks -- but not education, healthcare, public service. To deal with unrest, the current government’s invested in repression; costly drones, Israeli military police trainers, the military itself. Now soldiers patrol the streets.

Black people are killed with impunity. LGBT people? More LGBT people are murdered per year in Brazil than anyplace else on earth.

(Source: Time Magazine)