Welcome to The Socialist Program. This is the audio of our monthly seminar.

Subscribe and support this programming at patreon.com slash the Socialist Program to join live once a month and ask Brian Becker your questions and listen to them as soon as they come out.

Thanks so much for your help in keeping this independent show going. We can make this program with you,

but not without you. Yes, I want to like you, Nicole. Thank everyone for supporting the show.

The number of patrons is growing, and that's very, very important to the extent that we have

financial support means that we can do the show. If we were able to

get more support, we would be able to expand the show. We have a little under 600 people who are

subscribing, but we have many, many thousands of people who are regular listeners to the show

and they don't subscribe.

And of course, we want to be able to provide free content.

We want to be able to do battle in the battle of ideas with bourgeois ideology, which is dominating.

And at the same time, we need people to do their part to show their support by subscribing. And subscribing is not that

onerous, it's not that burdensome. It's really just a matter of people making a decision to do it.

We encourage everyone who's not a patron to become one. And we thank all of you so much

for your enduring support, really important for us.

It's important not only financially, it's also important psychologically to know that people

really do care about the show. And as Nicole said, it's a lot of work to produce this level

of content independently without any corporate or major institutional structural backing.

So knowing that people really care about the show, use the show, rely on the show, like the show,

and support the show makes a big difference. Let's get started. Brazil, it was a close,

fairly close election, but Lula has won. I mean, the Workers' Party of Brazil,

which Lula founded and was the leader of, won four straight popular votes starting in 2000.

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