Marcela Menezes

Marcela Menezes (b. Ribeirão das Neves, Brasil) is a social activist who has varied experiences in social movements, in academia, and in the cultural field. The reality of inequalities, early death, poverty, lack of perspectives or dreams, the mechanical life of reproducing tasks in an alienated way in exchange for precarious survival, as well as the lack of time to be creative and happy instigates and pushes her to reflect and act –always in a collective way.

Since 2009, she has co-founded and taken part in several collectives that seek to build alternative economic, cultural, and political practices towards building a reality of dignified life for all, from the perspective of solidarity economy and via community engagement. Nowadays, she is part of the ‘Coletivo Justinópolis de Economia Solidária’ and the ‘Coletivo Balaio’, and she is also the president of the Woman-led Municipal Council of her city.

In addition to grassroots organizing, carnival, samba, capoeira angola, street culture and popular religiosities are the way she experiences ancestrality, coexistence, resistance in the midst of oppression and human creative power.

Menezes is a public servant acting as specialist in public policy and a peripheral cultural experiencer/producer in local cultural collectives.