Brazil’s Lula launches reelection bid, aims to win back workers to his Workers Party

Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva inaugurated his final reelection campaign on Sunday at a historic stadium where he addressed a massive crowd of striking metalworkers in 1979, without the aid of any sound system. The return to the "May 1" stadium in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a once-booming factory town on Sao Paulo's industrial outskirts, serves as a homage to the labor movement that eventually led Lula from being a factory worker to the nation's first working-class president.

In his speech to an audience of around 20,000 supporters, many wearing the characteristic red of his Workers Party (PT), Lula expressed gratitude to the country's working men and women. "At one point, they believed that someone like them could do more for them than someone different from them," Lula remarked on Sunday. However, five decades later, Lula faces the challenge of mobilizing a new generation of gig workers in the digital economy, who have little connection to the unions and factory floors that once constituted the foundation of the PT.