Assassination Of Marielle Franco Has Created A Global Icon

You couldn't miss her face, as it was all over TV and social media during the past four days. Outside Brazil many of us didn't know about her until her gruesome death. Marielle Franco, a black lesbian woman from the Maré favela who received the fifth-most votes in the Rio de Janeiro city council elections in 2016, gave hope to a young generation of rights defenders and the largely marginalized black population. She showed that it was possible to have a politician who is in touch with everyday people's struggles in a country where leadership is marked by corruption scandals.

At the age of 38, Franco was killed on March 14 with her driver Anderson Pedro after leaving a black women empowerment event. As a local councillor and human rights defender, her work and values had already reverberated beyond Rio to the rest of Brazil. She advocated for Brazil's poor, spoke out against police violence and was a harsh critic of the conduct of politics in her country.

"Her 2016 campaign, branded the Brazilian feminist color of purple, introduced 50 ideas to help women, Afro-Brazilians and the poor. When elected, she became the only black woman representative on the 51-person council and one of only seven women."

Her tragic death brought her to the world stage. Within 42 hours after her assassination, "Franco became the subject of more than 3.6 million tweets from 400,000 users in 54 countries and in 34 languages – more than the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff."

Protests have been held across Brazil and many other cities like Paris, New York and Buenos Aires. The writer highlights why Franco's voice mattered with Afro-Brazilians making up more than 70% of the country's victims of murder, many committed at the hands of police. In her own state of Rio de Janeiro, more than 1, 000 people were murdered by police last year. The protests are not only about the murder of Franco, but about the murder and marginalisation of black people in Brazil.