In dingy Brazilian offices and outdoor cafes President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's disappointed supporters are huddling around their moment of truth. Conversations keep coming back to the question of whether or not to vote for him again in October. People are trying to figure out how to relate to a man and political party that was suppose to represent them and has failed to do so on many levels.
 
      Marcus Arruda ,who was stuffed between pamphlets and posters in the back room of the Institute For Policy Alternatives, was arriving at a  decision  different from that of American activists who sit out elections and sulk. "Withholding my vote wouldn't just be punishing  Lula. " It would be punishing the Brazilian poor," he said, unwilling, from the comfort of his middle class life, to deny those living in the shamble of favelas the marginal ease a Lula victory would bring.
 
     Even some who had hoped Lula's election in 2002 would begin a major transformation of society are willing to put their disillusion on hold. Mario Goldman, an anthropologist working with a poor black community in the Northeast, said with slouched resignation. " What we have now is the Americanization of Brazilian politics. It is a choice between small differences. I will chose the small differences."
 
      Those small differences can seem enviable to progressives from Bush country. The Brazilian legislature passed a law requiring public universities to set a quota of 40% for students who are Black, indian or poor. All tuition is free. There was a new mandate requiring Afro-Brazilian history and culture be taught even in elementary grades. Luiz Magalhaes, an instructor at a Protestant school, was waiting for the first day of class with wicked glee imagining some of his evangelical colleagues explaining the African gods of the Candomble religion and being driven up a wall. These gestures of Lula, along with a strong Black movement, are forcing his society of denial to finally face the issues of race and poverty in ways Americas no longer do except for brief pangs after Katrina.
 
       During these months when everyone is weighing Lula's accomplishments and trying to decide what to do about him, the debate has taken to the newsstand. Epoca, a glossy magazine comparable to Time, has headlines rating the President on his 20 main promises. They gave him a score of 57% on promise keeping. In jazzy graphics they showed  that he had created 4 million new jobs instead of 10 million. He settled  235 landless families on farmland, not 400 thousand. He raised the minimum wage only 25% instead of the 50% he pledged. He, by the end of his term, was expected to provide health care for 85 million people, rather than 120 million.
 
       Flipping through the pages of the magazine, some of Lula's past and maybe future voters spewed criticism on his numbers that didn't come close to meeting the social needs. Their most passionate and legitimate complaint dealt with  Lula's failure to challenge the economic policy demanded by Washington and foreign investors that left few financial resources for human equity. There was wistful talk of the might-have-beens if Lula had used his mandate and the social movements allied with  his Workers' Party to fight for better terms on debt repayment that would have let them make their own people the priority. It seemed a bit strange for all these grassroots organizer to have put so much faith in a leader. It sometimes felt like a twelve step program with everyone wanting to turn their power over to a higher authority
 
      It was only late in conversations gathered around draft beers and salty fried snacks that activists got past the issue of Lula to look at their own responsibility for how little basic change was made. Francisco Whicker, a wiry founder of the World Social Forum, didn't think the social movements had handled their relationship to Lula very well. It was partly loyalty that restrained their criticism. It was partly co option through government subsidies and jobs. " The Workers' Party took much of the leadership of the social movements and that was a disaster for us," he said. "They also tried to involve us in protecting the government by lessening pressure on it. We began to lose the power to control our movement and our way."
 
      In order to find a new direction, and decide what to do about Lula's reelection, Whitaker and 15,000 activist held a Brazilian Social Forum in the late spring. It was a ritual end to the blurred line between the social movements and the government, an untangling of identities. There would be a qualitatively different relationship with a second Lula administration said Jaime Amorim, a leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement(MST). He reflected the new understanding that Lula was neither a very brave or a very confrontational man. He always was a negotiator. They would have to forcefully and publicly present their demands to give him something to negotiate..                       
 
      It was fitting that Amorin was the one to talk about taking a more rambunctious approach. MST, after being quiescent during the first year of the administration, was the first to break from the role of cheerleader for Lulu. They began pressing him for change by occupying farmland. The Black movement also recognized  there are different functions for even a good President caught up in the logic of elections and organizers who need to push him further than he wants to go. They ignored Lula's pleas to stay home, and, in 2005, brought 20,000 demonstrates to the capital to take care of their community instead of  him.
 
      For most of the other people at the Forum, it was catch up time, a belated move away from their oxymoronic position as passive activists. Instead of waiting for Lula to clean up the corruption that tainted officials in his government, 200 groups formed The Citizens Network for Political reform to push for public financing of elections and a reduction of  the 20,000 patronage jobs the President controls. Instead of hoping that he would change his economic policy, labor leaders backed developing an alternative economic plan to be presented to whoever wins the election. Some activist  also wanted an after-implementation-plan to deal with the international payback that will come from bucking the Washington Consensus and with people's fear that their savings, credit and lives will be destroyed.
 
      In the excitement of trying to reshape the future, they never forgot the immediate question of Lula's reelection. In the 250 workshops and the corridors outside them, those who had broken away to form the Socialism and Freedom Party tried to persuade people to vote for their candidate Senator Heloisa Helena. Some like Marcus Arruda considered doing a protest vote for the tiny party in the first round of the election, and voting for Lula in the anticipated second round. It was based on the risky assumption that Lula will continue to lead in the race. That election impulse was stayed during the days of debate by the invisible presence of Geraldo Alckmin, the strongest opposition candidate. He was already criticizing Lula for his excessive social spending, and, in office, would likely do away with even the small difference.
 
      By the time of the final plenary, the sense of the meeting was that the reelection of Lula was the best option. It was more than the lesser of two evils. Those voting for him were beginning a new multi focused strategy. It enabled them to let go of some of their bitterness during the rest of the presidential campaign. They consciously deromanticized both politicians and elections. They no longer saw a leader like Lula as a savior, but as just one part of the effort to alter society. They viewed the election as only a starting point, the thing that opened more hospitable political space in which independent activists could do the essential work. It was a take all the improvements you can get anywhere you can get them approach. The Brazilian movement was becoming too sophisticated to chose between electing a perfect President, or working only in protest vehicles. They were putting an end to simple absolutes and offering a new model of change to disillusioned North Ameicans.
 
Marlene Nadle is a foreign affairs journalist and an Associate of the Council On Hemispheric Affairs.