X-ing the Games

Tonight while writing, I heard a mounting wall of sound outside that I ignored until it was un-ignorable. It was the unmistakable sounds of a protest: Chanting, marching, shouting, whistles and one overpowering voice on a microphone. Not a rare thing around here.

I looked out from our balcony down to Avenida Vente Tres de Maio--one of the city's busiest highways--to see where the noise could be coming from in relation to it. That's when I saw something I had never seen before. The highway was covered in people instead of cars. This was at rush hour nevertheless.

The protest was one in a regular series of demonstrations here against the World Cup. Even in the country that loves the "Beautiful Game," there's a significant portion of the population disgusted by the billions spent on hosting the event when citizens are hungry, sick and living in squalor. Tonight's protest in particular was in support of public education, not new soccer stadiums.

Protests like this are expected to continue up to and throughout the month-long World Cup. In a city already snarled by traffic, it takes commuting into a new depth of the abyss.

While most demonstrators are peaceful, some are willing to do whatever necessary to stop the games from functioning. Police often have to take these protests head on. Injuries and deaths occur. One person died in Rio at one of these earlier in the week.

Avenida Vente Tres de Maio at 7:00 pm.

"Stop lying! Invest in education"

You probably know what FIFA is.