More guns in Brazil alarms experts
SAO PAULO — Katia Sastre was walking her 7year-old to class in Suzano, a violent city near Sao Paulo, when she saw a young man draw a pistol on other parents standing by the school’s front door.
Within seconds, she pulled the .38 special she carried in her purse.
The off-duty police officer’s three shots killed the mugger on that morning in May 2018 and kicked off her transformation into a beacon for champions of looser gun control. Security camera footage produced medals, social media star power and a congressional run in the same conservative wave that lifted pro-gun lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro from the fringes to the presidency.
Now a lawmaker herself, she is backing Bolsonaro’s push to deliver a gun to every Brazilian who wants one, and dismisses public security experts’ concerns about the president’s four recently issued gun decrees. They will take effect next month — unless Congress or courts intervene.
“Brazilians want assurances for self-defense because they feel insecure about criminality,” Sastre
told the Associated Press, blaming a 2003 disarmament law for heightened violence and more than 65,000 violent deaths in Brazil in 2017. “The guns used in those killings weren’t in the hands of citizens; they came illegally from traffickers and criminals.”
Sastre is in the minority of Brazilians, almost threequarters of whom want stricter gun laws, according to the most recent poll. Yet the unpopular proposal is among Bolsonaro’s top priorities for deploying his recently replenished political capital, even in Brazil’s worst throes of the pandemic, with about 1,800 people dying per day.
Anti-gun activists, a former defense minister and high-ranking former police officers, including an ex-national public security secretary, warn the decrees will only add to the body count.
The two decrees causing most controversy would boost the number of
guns average Brazilians can own — to six, from four currently — and enable them to carry two simultaneously. Policemen, core supporters of the president, could have eight firearms if the decrees stand.
Ilona Szabo, director at the security-focused Igarape Institute in Rio de Janeiro, has pushed back against Bolsonaro’s attempts to get more guns to Brazilians. Nominated to a national security council, she faced a deluge of threats from Bolsonaro devotees and had to flee the country.
From abroad, she’s urging lawmakers and the country’s Supreme Court to strike down the measures.
Court justices are expected to rule within weeks on the first of at least 10 challenges to the decrees.
“There is no technical justification for those decrees; it is evident that they make policing harder and could end up favoring criminal organizations,”
Szabo said.
The number of deaths from gunshots rose by 6 percent a year from 1980 to 2003, when the disarmament law passed. After that, the rate fell to 0.9 percent through 2018, when it was fully implemented, according to government research institute IPEA’S Violence Atlas. That shows fewer guns translates into fewer deaths, Szabo said.
And although homicides increased in the years leading up to 2017, they plunged in 2018 — before any measures to loosen gun control.
Last month, Igarape and the Sou da Paz Institute, which researches violence, said there were almost 1.2 million legal guns in Brazilians’ hands, up 65 percent from the month before Bolsonaro’s term began.
Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who expresses nostalgia for Brazil’s three decades of military rule, has said he wants to arm citizens to prevent a dictatorship from taking hold.
More than 1,000 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently signed a letter calling for the agency to address “a pervasive and toxic culture of racial aggressions, bullying and marginalization” against Black employees.
The letter pointed to a “lack of inclusion in the agency’s senior ranks” and “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination.” Similar charges of lack of workplace inclusion have been leveled against Google, Mcdonald’s and Pinterest. And just recently, a Black seniorlevel manager at Amazon filed a lawsuit against the tech giant and two executives over alleged race and gender discrimination, as well as pay inequity.
It’s the latest example of alleged diversity and inclusion missteps by a major employer. A lack of inclusion in the workplace can take many forms: ignoring ideas during meetings, withholding resources — including information, promotion opportunities and equitable compensation — and excluding some colleagues from social events such as lunches, dinners and happy hours where business may happen. As employees take their cues from leadership, a culture of lack of inclusion often begins at the top.
Not being included literally hurts. After being rejected in an online game, study participants who took Tylenol, compared with a placebo group, reported lower hurt feelings and pain. And just like its physical effects, exclusion has real, tangible impacts on companies: lowquality work, underutilization of diverse talent, poorer employee satisfaction, burnout and turnover.
Yet diversity matters more than ever to companies. Markets are growing more diverse, both at home and abroad. Even companies that sell products only in the U.S. must better understand who their customers are and what they value. Additionally, millennial employees — who will make up 80 percent of the workforce by 2025 — are focused on employer values, preferring to work for companies that emphasize diversity and inclusion.
When workers are respected for their totality — their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or
disabilities — organizations will get the most from their employees. Diversity results in superior creative outcomes for teams. And research shows that boards of directors and top management also benefit from diversity.
With all benefits to businesses and employees from a culture of inclusion, why does workplace exclusion continue? The reason is evolutionary: Humans are hard-wired to not be inclusive. Our empathy for others depends on whether they belong to our group. Brain studies show we actually feel more emotion when
we observe suffering by members of our race. That means we care less when outgroup members get excluded.
However, we can still build a culture of inclusion. CEOS and other company leaders must be open to change, learning to respect and welcome differences. For example, Salesforce.com Inc., led by CEO Marc Benioff, has earned a top score on the Disability Equality Index and was named a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion.” Salesforce has taken steps toward hiring inclusively and using accessible tools and technology.
More companies must take concrete actions to ensure equity in all business processes, including hiring, retention, promotion and compensation. More than 1,300 CEOS have signed the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion Pledge to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
At the team and individual levels, empathy can be enhanced through exercises that involve someone else’s perspective. Research shows something as simple as listening to a radio drama or participating in an intergroup workshop can increase empathy for people who are different from us.
More organizations should work toward a culture of inclusion — and they need to realize it’s not going to be easy. It requires proactive leaders, the commitment of resources and a willingness to change organizational culture. However, these investments will pay dividends as inclusion is a win-win strategy for both the organization and its employees.