“It hasn't ended, it must end: We want the end of the military police,” protesters chanted in yesterday's march. Image by Mídia Ninja CC BY 2.0. Hundreds took to the streets in São Paulo this Thursday, December 18 to protest against racial profiling and police violence against black people. More than just support for the rallies in the US that followed the deaths of Ferguson, Missouri's Michael Brown and New York City's Eric Garner — two unarmed black men killed by white police officers — Brazilian protesters wanted to underline the country's own reality: black people are systematically targeted and slain by the Brazilian police. A study carried out by University of São Carlos showed that 61 percent of all people killed by the São Paulo military police were black. According to another study, from the Forum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, Brazilian police officers are the most deadly in the world, killing six people every day in the last 5 years. During the protest, signs with “Não conseguimos respirar” [We can't breath] written on it could be seen, as well as the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, or the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media. A marcha Ferguson é aqui está em frente Secretaria Estadual de Segurança esperando secretário receber uma comissão. pic.twitter.com/KpM9v8opWY — Podemos mais (@PodemosMaisBR) December 18, 2014 The Ferguson march is here in front of the State Secretary of Security waiting for the secretary to meet with a commission. In an official letter handed to São Paulo state government, more than 50 human rights organizations and black movements detailed a number of requests: that killings of young black men by the police be investigated, that the State Prosecutor’s Office have stronger oversight of police activities, and that the families of those killed by the state receive legal compensation, among other things: Vivenciamos em nossas comunidades o extermínio que se dá através de sistemáticos assassinatos, já traduzidos em números que se assemelham a até superam guerras. Isso somado às precárias condições de vida e à negação de direitos básicos tais como saúde, educação, segurança, moradia, transporte, acesso à universidades, à cultura e ao lazer – que atingem sobremaneira a população negra – configura na visão dos movimentos sociais e do movimento negro, um verdadeiro genocídio contra a juventude e o povo negro. We see in our communities pure extermination, which happens through systematic homicides in numbers similar to those seen in war, or even higher. This, added to the precarious conditions of life and denial of basic rights like health, education, security, housing, transport, access to university, culture and entertainment – which affects, above all, the black population – means for the social movements and the black movements a true genocide of Brazilian black youths and the black population. For blogger Douglas Belchior, Brazil’s mainstream media has different attitudes when covering the matter in the United States and in Brazil: A grande mídia, por sua vez, ao mesmo tempo em que noticia parcialmente o levante das massas negras nos EUA, em denúncia à violência policial daquele país, omite-se em repercutir as atrocidades promovidas pelas polícias brasileiras. Ao contrário, […] naturalizam a morte onde, via de regra, o silêncio do morto configura a prova da inocência do assassino. The mainstream media, while partially covering the black people's rallies in the United States denouncing the violent police there, overlooks the atrocities committed by the Brazilian police. On the contrary, […] the media naturalize death, so that [the news] reads as if the silence of the dead means the innocence of the murderer. Since the Ferguson protests began in the US, Brazilians have been making the connection. In August, journalist Fernando Vianna wrote an article for newspaper Folha de São Paulo with the same name of yesterday’s protest, “Ferguson é aqui” (Ferguson is here), in which he says: Protesters in São Paulo wrote the names of both Americans and Brazilians killed by police on a banner. Photo by Facebook user Leh Aguiar. Se para cada morte de um jovem negro pela polícia, no Brasil, segmentos da população saíssem às ruas tomados de revolta similar à ocorrida em Fergurson, nos EUA, viveríamos em convulsão diária. If after every death of a young black person at the hands of police in Brazil, part of the population took to the streets in fury, like in Ferguson, we would live in daily convulsion. Rio de Janeiro Federal University sociologist Ignacio Cano told Bloomberg in November: Our police kills by the hundreds. We have a Ferguson every day. [The difference is that] there (in the US) everyone agrees that all people are equal before the law.