Our History

Our Background Story

On December 1, 2018, 200 activists and academics gathered for a day-long conference at the Columbia Law School to found the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil. During the meeting, participants organized fourteen Working Groups that will be collecting and disseminating information to the U.S. public about the effects of the far-right turn in Brazilian politics and the conservative agenda of the new Bolsonaro government. A National Steering Committee was formed that is made up of forty organizations that have joined the Network. Over 1,500 people in 234 colleges and universities throughout the United States have also joined the Network. The Network is currently developing the U.S. Observatory for Democracy in Brazil, a website that will serve as a hub and clearing house to disseminate information in English about the current situation in Brazil.

Our Mission

Our Values and Objectives 

The U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil is a decentralized, democratic, non-partisan national network with three objectives:

(1) Educate the U.S. public about the current situation in Brazil

(2) Defend social, economic, political, and cultural advances in Brazil

(3) Support social movements, community organizations, NGOs, universities, and activists, etc., who will be vulnerable in this new political climate

James Green

National Co-Coordinator

James N. Green is Professor of Brazilian history and culture at Brown University. He is the author or co-editor of eleven books on twentieth-century Brazil. He is currently the National Co-Coordinator of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil.

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour

National Co-Coordinator

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour is an Associate Professor of Public Policy & Political Economy in the Department of African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a political scientist specializing in Afro-Brazilian political behavior, black racial identity, discrimination, affirmative action and Bolsa Familia. She was the 2018-2020 president of the Brazil Studies Association. She is also Co-Coordinator  of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil. She published the book “The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She has published in numerous peer reviewed journals including Latin American Politics & Society, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and the National Political Science Review. She was a Lemann Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University in 2014. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan -Ann Arbor, and a BA from Duke University.

Marina Dias Lucena Adams

Political Organizer

Marina Dias Lucena Adams is a doctoral student in History at Brown University where she also received her A.M in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She has been involved with political organizing since her undergraduate years in Brazil and the United States, particularly around issues of gender and race. Marina is a founding member of the U.S Network for Democracy in Brazil and, currently, its National Organizer.

Roni Wine

National Organizer / Head of Communications 

Roni Wine is a student at Brown University pursuing B.As in Economics and in Development Studies. He has been working at the USNDB since February 2020 as the Network’s Head of Communications and, as of April 2021, assumed the role of National Organizer. Prior to that, he was involved with informal education, human rights activism and social justice through a youth movement in Brazil, worked in electoral campaigns in Rio de Janeiro, and interned at an innovation hub and at a startup focused on reducing social inequality through financial technology.